Is ballot harvesting legal in California? Yes, and that worries some Republicans

Three years ago, a state law made it easier for Californians to have someone else collect and drop off their absentee ballot.

Doing this on a mass scale became known as ballot harvesting. And in recent months many conservative politicians and their advisers have suggested the practice – not  Democratic voter enthusiasm nor a public backlash against President Donald Trump – is the reason Republicans lost ground federally and in Sacramento in the November midterms.

Now, Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona has sent Riverside County’s Registrar of Voters a letter saying ballot harvesting is “ripe for fraud,” and posing a list of 27 questions about ballot harvesting that he says remain unanswered.

“When unknown third parties are handling hundreds or thousands of ballots with no transparency, voters are understandably concerned. Our election laws should always be focused on what protects the confidence and integrity of our elections, not what gives one party an advantage over the other,” Calvert said in a Tuesday, March 5 news release.

His statement made reference to North Carolina, where a second vote is scheduled in a congressional district following allegations of fraud that allegedly skewed the results of the Nov. 6 election. In the North Carolina race, a political operative working for the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, was indicted on charges that he took voters’ absentee ballots and destroyed or altered them before they could be counted.

Ballot harvesting isn’t legal in North Carolina, and the actions attributed to political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless don’t match up with ballot harvesting as it is practiced in California or anywhere.

Still, Calvert, in his letter, said California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and other election officials “have provided little if any information on the rules and regulations covering ballot harvesting since Democrats legalized the practice in our state.” Calvert added, without offering evidence, that the existence of ballot harvesting has led to  “an erosion of voter confidence in the integrity of California’s elections.”

In an emailed statement asking for a response to Calvert’s letter, Padilla said: “In California, we’re expanding opportunities for eligible citizens to register to vote and for registered voters to cast their ballot. These opportunities include in-person early voting, the option to vote-by-mail, and giving voters the power to decide who they most trust to return their vote-by-mail ballot for them if they so choose.

“As other states are rolling back voting rights, California is modernizing our elections and making it easier for all eligible citizens to participate.”

In his March 4 letter to Riverside County Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer, Calvert asked how absentee and mail-in ballot collectors are tracked, who can collect ballots and what happens when election workers spot possibly tampered-with envelopes in a batch of mail-in ballots.

The letter did not mention any specific incidents of election or voter fraud.

Riverside County spokeswoman Brooke Federico said Spencer received Calvert’s letter and “will work with his office to provide the requested information … It is the mission of the Registrar of Voter’s Office to ensure the integrity of the elections process while following all requirements outlined in the state and federal elections code.”

In a Wednesday morning tweet, Calvert said Democrats killed his proposal to include a ban on ballot harvesting in H.R. 1, a sweeping campaign finance and political ethics bill now being debated in the House.

“(House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi and CA Democrats are doing everything they can to protect ballot harvesting regardless of the fraud it invites into our elections,” Calvert wrote.

There were no formal complaints about voter or election fraud in California related to ballot harvesting, according to state data.

Lawmakers baffled

Calvert isn’t the only Republican wary of ballot harvesting.

“California just defies logic to me,” then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said about the November election. “We were only down 26 seats the night of the election, and three weeks later, we lost basically every California contested race. This election system they have – I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

California’s election laws allow for mail-in ballots to be counted days after they arrive at the registrar’s office. Record voter turnout and reliance on paper ballots led to thousands of uncounted ballots on election night that took weeks to process, with the outcome of close races changing as more votes were counted.

Late lead changes consistently favored Democrats in a state where Democrats hold a double-digit percentage point edge over the GOP in voter registration and where, since 1998, the percentage of registered Republican voters has fallen from 36 to 24 percent. Votes counted after election day included absentee ballots and walk-up voters, categories of voters in which Democrats traditionally outnumber Republicans.

In conservative media, “ballot harvesting” is being used as a scornful term. “How Ballot-Harvesting Became The New Way to Steal an Election,” read a Dec. 14, 2018 headline on The Federalist website.

“‘Ballot Harvesting,’ Dems’ Latest Election Stealing Tool,” read a Dec. 3, 2018 Townhall.com headline.

Bill Essayli, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, last fall, blamed ballot harvesting for his loss in a battleground district.

“It’s not fraud if it’s legal,” he wrote on Twitter. “ … Paying campaign operatives and union workers to collect ballots from reluctant voters is not democracy – its (sic) a banana republic.”

Others disagree, suggesting that ballot harvesting and other efforts to make voting easier is the opposite of “banana republic.”

After Ryan questioned the validity of voting in California, and specifically questioned ballot harvesting, Padilla took to Twitter to defend the state’s push to expand the franchise: “In California we make sure every ballot is properly counted and accounted for. That’s not ‘bizarre,’ that’s DEMOCRACY.”

“Another obstacle”

Until 2016, someone could turn in a voter’s ballot only if he or she was related to the voter or lived in the same household.

But that changed in 2016, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1921, making it legal for anyone to collect and turn in an absentee or mail-in ballot. The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, said the family restriction, while well-meaning, “simply provide(s) yet another obstacle for individuals attempting to vote, without any evidence-based justification against voter fraud.”

To prevent fraud, the bill bans ballot collectors from being paid based on the number of ballots they turn in. By law, every voter signature on a mail-in ballot must be verified. Also, voters can check the status of their ballot online and, if their mail-in ballot isn’t counted, voters must be told why.

Justin Levitt, a law professor and election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said that while the alleged election fraud reported in North Carolina is concerning, it’s not the norm. “It makes a big impact when you hear about it because it doesn’t happen that often,” he said.

Steps can be taken, like requiring ballot collectors to issue receipts to voters, that don’t interfere with the right to vote, Levitt added.

“I don’t think the number (of ballots collected and turned in by someone) matters as long as the ballots are faithfully and correctly turned in,” he said.