California’s Republican Party on Monday acknowledged owning unofficial ballot drop boxes that state election officials said are illegal.
California election officials received reports over the weekend about the boxes in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties.
On Sunday, the secretary of state issued a memo telling county registrars the boxes were illegal and that ballots must be mailed or brought to official voting locations.
“In short, providing unauthorized, non-official vote-by-mail ballot drop boxes is prohibited by state law,” the memo said.
State GOP spokesman Hector Barajas said that the party owns the boxes. He declined comment on how many exist and where they are located. Barajas said the state’s law governing so-called ballot harvesting allows an organization to collect and return groups of ballots.
“Democrats only seem to object to ballot harvesting when someone else does it,” Barajas said.
The controversy surfaced after a regional field director for the state’s GOP in Orange County posed in a social media photo with one of the unofficial boxes and wearing a face covering supporting the congressional campaign of Michelle Steel, a county supervisor who is challenging Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda for his seat.
There were also reports about similar boxes at a church in the Los Angeles County community of Castaic and at various locations in Fresno County.
In Orange County, the district attorney is investigating at least two unofficial boxes in two different cities, said Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.
Neal Kelley, the county’s registrar of voters, said official drop boxes are clearly recognizable and carry official county elections logo. He said it wasn’t clear how many voters had used unofficial boxes but after receiving reports about them, he notified the state and district attorney’s office.
Fresno County Republicans said they will remove the boxes that had been placed at party headquarters, a gas station and gun shops, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Ballots will be turned in to county election officials, which was always the plan, said Fred Vanderhoof, chair of the Fresno Republican Party.
California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks criticized the placement of the unofficial ballot drop boxes.
“Sadly, this is par for the course from the Republican Party — well-versed in making it harder, not easier for Californians to vote,” he said in a statement.
(AP)
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5 Responses
Looks like voter fraud to me – by the California Republican party.
Must be fake news….Republicans engaging in illegal and fraudulent election tampering like ballot harvesting??? If you google “ballot harvesting” (I cannot post the link) you will find that the only recent felony conviction for ballot harvesting involved Leslie McCrae Dowless, a Republican working for a REPUBLICAN congressional candidate in North Carolina. Also, if I recall correctly the ORIGINALIST in voter suppression and dirty tricks was a Republican supporter of Richard Nixon whose felony conviction by a federal court were recently commuted by the Trumpkopf.
All fake news I guess.
These GOP ballot harvesters in California are doing so against the wishes of the party. California legalized ballot harvesting as of 2016. This is actually a stunt to show, for example, the presumed falsehood of the allegation:
> “In short, providing unauthorized, non-official vote-by-mail ballot drop boxes is prohibited by state law,” the memo said.
Apparently California law authorizes certain agencies to create drop boxes but, apparently, never explicitly forbids anyone else from creating one. The point being, that before ballot harvesting was legalized the law had forbid anyone who was not not specifically authorized to do so from even handling a ballot (and penalties for violations). The legalization of the ballot harvesting did away with that. So now there is apparently no law, nor penalty, for doing this like this. And for that matter, no penalty for not following the rules (such few as there may be) for ballot harvesters (short of destruction or waylay of the ballot).
California law permits ballot harvesting, and the Democrats do it openly. They won 6 seats two years ago by doing it. There is no reason at all for the Republicans not to do so. And providing drop-off boxes is an obvious and convenient way to do it. But unlike the Democrats, the Republicans are doing it honestly; fraud is almost entirely a Democrat thing.
Democrats like Huju are upset for one reason only: Because they know that THEY are dishonest, and they know that they use harvesting to cheat, so they automatically think the Republicans must be doing that too. But the truth is Democrats are dishonest but Republicans are honest and don’t cheat.