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Twitter user Rebecca Albarran posted this photo on Monday of an unofficial ballot drop box outside St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Simi Valley. (Screengrab from Twitter)
Last Monday I read an article online about ballot harvesting. I have never heard of it before so I looked for more information on what exactly ballot harvesting means and why it is now a problem. It became law (I couldn’t find the exact year it came into effect) to help California voters who couldn’t return their mail-in ballots themselves. Under the law, they could designate a family member or person living in the same household to deliver it for them. This included dropping it off at a ballot drop box, elections office, or the US mail. That sounds pretty straightforward to me.
I did find that in 2016, under Assembly Bill 1921, the state legislature expanded the law to allow any persons to deliver the ballots, which brings us to the 2020 election.
Last Monday the GOP decided to place unofficial, unsecured ballot boxes around cities in California. Doing this is illegal. Hector Barajas, the spokesperson for the Republican Party, argued, “There is nothing in the law stating what type of container can be used to collect ballots, nor does it require the ballots to be signed by the person who delivers them. What we are doing is quite legal and what is allowed within the law.”
I researched his claim and found what the law states on the website, Capital Alert.
“The Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Becerra say the law is quite clear: the unofficial, unauthorized drop boxes in question violate state law and jeopardize the security of voters’ ballots. According to the state officials, the unofficial boxes that appeared over the weekend in Fresno, Los Angeles, and Orange Counties misled voters to believe they were official and secure boxes. Some were set up outside gas stations, party headquarters, and even gun stores. This wouldn’t be a problem if there was an actual person assigned to stand by the ballot boxes. Right now, no one is doing that. There is no accountability when a ballot box is left unattended.
“According to Becerra, ‘The only valid drop boxes are secure receptacles established by local elections officials that also adhere to state security standards, and anyone returning a ballot on behalf of a voter must provide their name, signature, and relation to the voter on the return ballot. Voters must also know who specifically is returning their ballot.'”
I am sure that voters from either party would agree they have the right to know exactly who is picking up the ballots and delivering them to the elections office.
Attorney General Becerra has given the Republican Party until Thursday, October 15th to remove all the unofficial boxes, and as of today, the boxes are still there but the name “official ballot drop box” has since been removed. The boxes are still sitting outside, unattended.
Last week, I dropped off my mail-in ballot at the local grocery store where I live. The ballot box was white metal with the sign “official ballot box” painted on it. It was located inside the store. Nothing on the box was held together with tape.
I spoke with the store manager today to find out more information about that particular box. He told me that his store was one of six locations that had official ballot boxes. The persons who came to install the box were from the Voters Registrations Office. Each box is locked and requires a key to get in. The manager did not know what happens to the ballots when they leave his store.
To find out what the protocol is for ballot boxes in my county, I emailed the Stanislaus County Elections Office. While I was writing this post, I got a call from Donna Linder the Clerk-Recorder from the Registrar of Voters and she explained the whole process to me.
The boxes put at the locations are certified and have locks on the front of each one. The persons who pick up the ballots are employees, not volunteers. They each went through background checks before they were hired. The ballots are picked up from the designated locations daily by a team of two people and have the only keys to get in each box. They wear orange vests with the name Stanislaus County Elections sewn on the front. The ballots are inside a black bag which is inside the official ballot box. The persons picking up the ballots take out the bag and immediately seal it and scan it with a time stamp. Then they put in a new bag. No one ever touches the ballots. The ballots are brought to the elections office where the bag is scanned again and the ballots are removed.
Ms. Linder told me that this is what Stanislaus County does to make sure our votes are secure. She cannot speak for other counties in California. I suggest that you call your county elections office and find out what they do.
As for the shenanigans the Republicans are doing, I am not surprised. What I do not understand is how so many of those whom we elected and are supposed to be public servants and took an oath to protect American citizens have no trouble acting deceitfully to protect their party. I already know the president lies and cheats every chance he gets in order to get his way. It seems to be part of his DNA.
We will find out tomorrow what the GOP will do about their illegal boxes and what our State Attorney General plans to do if they refuse to comply with his order.
Be sure to register your voter’s information online so you can keep track of where your ballot is. The tracking address information should have already have been mailed to you. If not, you should find it under your county’s voters registration website. Meanwhile, do your own research and share the information through social media. We need to help each other because the ones we elected do not seem to want to do their jobs.
Update, 10/17, from Inge (from her comment below):
I have an update about the GOP ballot harvesting post from a few days ago. At a press conference on Friday, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced they would not pursue legal action about the GOP ballot boxes. This came after the California Republican Party agreed not to place unauthorized ballot drop boxes outdoors, leave drop boxes unattended or present them as official. They will continue to accept ballots delivered by voters to local party offices and secure them in boxes attended by staff or volunteers.
That same day my local newspaper, “The Modesto Bee,” reported that at least three churches in my county, Stanislaus, was using dropoff ballot boxes. I decided to investigate.
This morning Hubby and I drove to Big Valley Grace Community Church to take a look at their ballot box. First of all, it is not a church, it’s a compound. There’s an elementary school, high school, I’m guessing a junior high school, although I didn’t see that building, a huge library, acres of land, and of course the church itself. Since the area was so big, we had no idea where to find a ballot box. The place was empty except for a groundskeeper and a security guard who happened to drive by us in a golf cart.
We asked him where we could find the ballot box but he didn’t know anything about it, except that they had one. The church office was closed, so we couldn’t talk to anyone inside.
We returned home and I looked up The Stanislaus County Republicans Facebook page and found a pinned post showing their endorsements and the same website, StanVote.com, that I used to find information about legal ballot dropoff boxes. I did not see any posts on their page referring voters to use the church drop boxes mentioned in The Modesto Bee.
I sent a message to find out more information and I got a call from a person at the local GOP office within a few minutes. He told me that they are not sending voters to churches. He didn’t have much to say about them, except the churches will probably stop collecting them. He then told me pretty much the same thing Donna Linder from the county clerk’s office told me regarding the protocol.
He then suggested that I go to StanVote.com, and find out where the closest dropoff ballot boxes were to me. I have to admit, he was very helpful and friendly. It makes me wonder why he supports such a loathsome criminal in the White House.
I suggest you contact your local county’s Republican Office and ask them questions. The only way to find out what’s really going on is to ask for yourself. There’s too much disinformation floating around and that includes major media sources.
Good job, Inge! I was going to get to this later tonight. (I may still do my own take, but for now I’ll leave a comment I made on Facebook:
Janet Nguyen (who has her own tough race) has been accused (by people who understandably won’t go on the record) of ordering ballots sent to Vietnamese nursing homes, then having pick up those ballots, fill them out, and forge that person’s signature in Vietnamese script.
(No, I can’t prove it, or I’d have gone to this DA — there was no point in going to the previous one — but more than one person from Little Saigon has tried to get me to write a story on it — back when Janet edged Correa in the State Senate race — but again none of them would go on the record, so I never had reliable facts to relate. I suspect that it’s true, though.)
Of course, our dogma suggests that this never happens. (Convenient!)
But frankly, this would be a difficult trick to do — at least for voters who write in a Roman script (English, Latino, Tagalog) — because our ROV is quite good at doing such signature comparisons. But ones in Vietnamese script? Korean, Mandarin? Maybe, or maybe not so much! And I would think they’d be sensitive to looking racist by disqualifying too many such ballots.
I suspect that these boxes have being deployed because they attenuate the trail between these votes and the ROV’s desk. To abide by the law, you would have a designated person to whom the ROV could go to check out the provenance of the ballot. With this, they won’t have one — the provenance just traces back to the church’s box.
That’s what I suspect is going on. In fact, the ones in Fresno and elsewhere may be a false lead for investigators — as the two close races they’d be concerned about are right here, in and around Little Saigon. It would be hard to prove wrongdoing if everyone involved kept quiet, but alliances in Little Saigon are sometimes fluid — so it may not be impossible
There is a Congressional and a Senate seat to be had here, with two Republican candidates with strong ties to the political establishment. Is that enough motivation? And are those places (mostly still unannounced) on other counties sites of similar races with large populations using non-Roman scripts that make their signatures harder to match — or is this like those cases where a serial killer really only wants to kill one person, but kills a few more to send investigators off their trail?
When I vote, I may go to one of those boxes so as to have standing to sue if my ballot doesn’t show up. Let me know where they are, folks!
The latest on this (at least from yesterday) – https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2020-news-releases-and-advisories/ap20099-title
The key, as I see it, is here: “They have agreed that they will not use the unstaffed, unsecured, ballot drop boxes that are misleadingly labeled to look official.” That SHOULD stop anyone from leaving (fake) ‘official’ ballot boxes at churches or nursing homes (at least, if people comply with the agreement…). The ‘unsecured’ part of it is the key – there’s no problem if I hold ballots in my hand, put them in a box or bin, or an envelope, or whatever – the problem is leaving it behind, ‘unsecured’ (which results in exactly the scenario you are bothered by at a church or nursing facility).
Had not occurred to me that the images in LA or elsewhere in CA were actually efforts to deflect from this in the OC. While that could be right, it’s counterproductive, since an effort to deflect or distract would draw greater scrutiny from enforcement authorities in Sacramento – I would have thought they’d want to ratchet down (if California Republicans were worried about that – that’s why I speculated that they just want to test enforcement capabilities HERE, then do this in AZ or other states where they expect far weaker enforcement).
In 2018, I watched Republican activists challenge dozens of Vietnamese signatures as “fraudulent” – Kelley disallowed almost every challenge (applying the law in a manner that struck me as very fair). Several of the activists and operatives doing that were Asian, though many were white as well; I was curious at the time if they were reflecting AAPI rivalries (Koreans disallowing Vietnamese votes?), since blocking older Vietnamese voters would be idiotic strategy (though at least a few of the folks they sent in to watch were extremely aggressive, angry, and distracting).
“since blocking older Vietnamese voters would be idiotic strategy (though at least a few of the folks they sent in to watch were extremely aggressive, angry, and distracting).”
ahem, an idiotic strategy for a Republican in Orange County who wanted to win an election. Democratic operatives were there to monitor and challenge the unfair (or racist) challenges; I kept notes, but would love to see more extensive data (most likely that would only happen in the event of a legal challenge…and again, activities in CA, with a good registrar, would likely be quite different from AZ or other states).
Nice to see you back.
+1
Unfortunately all Republican officials think they can follow the lead of their new Lord and Savior, the Rotting Yam. The law and order party now give law and order the big FU – unless the ANTIFA meanies can be blamed.
Shawn and Michelle Steel are particularly enamored of Trump and his every last spiritual wart.
*As Louie Armstrong always said: “The music goes round and round…oh..oh.oh…and
it comes out here!”
*When yer right, yer right.
Either Republican operatives are braindead, or the ploy is not exactly what meets the eye. More I think about it, more I think it’s the latter rather than the former.
So long as one does not put a fake ‘official ballot’ box out in the wild to actually collect ballots from voters, seems to me a person could properly receive a ballot in any form of container. If a voter signs the ballot, authorizes the 3rd party to deliver it on their behalf, and the 3rd party signs and actually delivers every ballot properly – then the person doing the ballot collection could take that ballot in hand, or put it in an envelope, or in a plastic bin – it doesn’t matter. And a person looking to do dirty tricks could even snap a photo of that bin, spread it on twitter, and try to see if the other side spreads a story…
Possibly, the intent was to create an appearance of fraud, encourage opposition to spread that story, then assess the effect (if any) on voter turnout rates. They can measure who encountered the story and who did not, and then look to see if they lose <1% or less of their votes (older, whiter voters tend to have less problem with mail in ballots), v. a loss of 3%+ for their rival's key voting demo (younger, less experienced voters may be more worried about fraud).
Just another cynical suppression tactic, but not necessarily 'illegal'…they'll claim that the 'official' decal on their plastic bins was a joke…
I have an update about the GOP ballot harvesting post from a few days ago. At a press conference on Friday, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced they would not pursue legal action about the GOP ballot boxes. This came after the California Republican Party agreed not to place unauthorized ballot drop boxes outdoors, leave drop boxes unattended or present them as official. They will continue to accept ballots delivered by voters to local party offices and secure them in boxes attended by staff or volunteers.
That same day my local newspaper, “The Modesto Bee,” reported that at least three churches in my county, Stanislaus, was using dropoff ballot boxes. I decided to investigate.
This morning Hubby and I drove to Big Valley Grace Community Church to take a look at their ballot box. First of all, it is not a church, it’s a compound. There’s an elementary school, high school, I’m guessing a junior high school, although I didn’t see that building, a huge library, acres of land, and of course the church itself. Since the area was so big, we had no idea where to find a ballot box. The place was empty except for a groundskeeper and a security guard who happened to drive by us in a golf cart.
We asked him where we could find the ballot box but he didn’t know anything about it, except that they had one. The church office was closed, so we couldn’t alk to anyone inside.
We returned home and I looked up The Stanislaus County Republicans Facebook page and found a pinned post showing their endorsements and the same website, StanVote.com, that I used to find information about legal ballot dropoff boxes. I did not see any posts on their page referring voters to use the church drop boxes mentioned in The Modesto Bee.
I sent a message to find out more information and I got a call from a person at the local GOP office within a few minutes. He told me that they are not sending voters to churches. He didn’t have much to say about them, except the churches will probably stop collecting them. He then told me pretty much the same thing Donna Linder from the county clerk’s office told me regarding the protocol.
He then suggested that I go to StanVote.com, and find out where the closest dropoff ballot boxes were to me. I have to admit, he was very helpful and friendly. It makes me wonder why he supports such a loathsome criminal in the White House.
I suggest you contact your local county’s Republican Officce and ask them questions. The only way to find out what’s really going on is to ask for yourself. There’s too much disinformation floating around and that includes major media sources.
I’m adding this to the story itself as well. For reasons I can’t comprehend, not everyone reads the comments.