Ballot Harvesting, Vote By Mail Schemes Are Dangerous for America

America and the world are going through two crises – the coronavirus and a precipitous economic decline. The federal government has reacted with social distancing rules and enormous amounts of money. Simultaneously, there is a third threat to America that could radically reduce our freedom and how we are governed in America. There is an enormous movement to allow vote by mail, which at first glance appears innocuous, but when you look at its history is very dangerous. The danger of vote by mail is the creation of “ballot harvesting,” which is rapidly increasing throughout America, especially where there are no laws stopping harvesting.

Dick Morris, a former top advisor to President Clinton, explains the scheme in Newsmax:

Democrats and their leftist field organizations use absentee and mail-in ballots to conduct "vote harvesting" in which they visit party strongholds like nursing homes, public housing projects, and Indian reservations to sign up voters and collect ballots en masse.

Since there is no secret ballot, intimidation and/or bribery play a big roll in collecting ballots, particularly in those locations where vulnerable voters could be subject to harassment.

Vote harvesting is believed to have played a key role in at least five surprise Democratic Congressional victories in California in 2018. (Republicans have no comparable ability to harvest votes since they don’t have locations where the concentration of GOP support is so widespread as to enable vote harvesting).

Previously, California had restrictions on “ballot harvesting” but the Democrat-controlled legislature removed all restrictions in 2016, and then-Governor Jerry Brown eagerly signed the legislation. Recently, Michelle Obama joined with Hollywood stars to demand vote by mail for this November’s election:

Join Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson by adding your name to fight for safe and fair elections,” the group wrote in the email, according to Breitbart News. It went on to add that COVID-19 has created a need for a countrywide expansion of voting by mail.

With the threat of Covid-19 looming over the November election, Congress must act to ensure every American has the ability to cast their ballot safely and without unnecessary risk,” MoveOn states on its petition page. “Tell your elected officials to expand access to vote-by-mail, early voting, and online voter registration.

Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation has extensively studied the rapid rise of vote harvesting and its severe harm to the integrity of elections in America. His report concludes:

Allowing individuals other than the voter or his immediate family to handle absentee ballots is a recipe for mischief and wrongdoing in the election context. Neither voters nor election officials have the means of verifying that the secrecy of the ballot has not been compromised or that the ballot submitted in the voter’s name by a third party actually contains votes for the voter’s intended candidates and was not fraudulently changed by the vote harvester.

It also gives campaign and party intermediaries the opportunity to interact with voters while they are casting a ballot out of sight of, and without any supervision by, election officials. Thus, there is no one present to ensure that voters are not being coerced, intimidated, or paid for a vote. As a report about illegal vote harvesting in Texas says, “away from on-site monitors and electioneering restrictions at traditional polling places,” the law that prohibits anyone from telling voters how to vote or marking their ballot without consent “is often honored in the breach.”

Finally, in von Spakovsky’s report a Texas District Attorney of Starr County concludes: "This type of abuse of voters who are ‘elderly’ and ‘infirm’ is so pervasive, says Omar Escobar (D), that ‘the time has come to consider an alternative to mail-in voting.’ Escobar says it needs to be replaced with ‘something that can’t be hijacked.’"