Until then-Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1921 in 2016, it was illegal for a person to return a vote-by-mail ballot for anyone who was not that person’s spouse, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister or a person residing in the same household as the voter.
It was also illegal for someone working or volunteering for a campaign committee or any group or organization to return a voter’s vote-by-mail ballot. By law, a vote-by-mail ballot could not be counted unless it was legally delivered.
AB1921 legalized the practice now known as “ballot harvesting.” The law allowed voters to give their ballot to anyone to be delivered to county election offices, and it allowed campaigns and other groups and organizations to send volunteers or paid employees to pick up ballots from willing voters.
The analysis of the bill that was prepared for the Legislature noted, “Existing law [in 2016] provides for a variety of safeguards to protect against voter fraud and abuse.”
These concerns were cited by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gov. Gray Davis when they vetoed similar bills.
There is no doubt that it is legal today for campaigns, groups and organizations to collect voters’ ballots and deliver them to county election offices. That’s the point made by the California Republican Party, which admitted it was behind the sudden appearance of slab-like ballot collection boxes at churches, gun stores and campaign offices in Los Angeles, Orange and Fresno Counties.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla says the boxes are illegal. One problem is that they were labeled “Official Ballot Drop Boxes.” The party has now reprinted the labels and omitted the word “official” from the text.
CAGOP spokesman Hector Barajas acknowledged on Monday that the CAGOP owns the boxes, saying the GOP doesn’t like ballot harvesting but Democrats wrote the law and now both sides have the right to collect ballots. The National Republican Congressional Committee issued a statement on Tuesday that read in part, “Republicans are following the laws Democrats put in place.”
This has the sound of bickering between siblings who are trying to convince their parents that the other one started it.
Voters are faced this year with an alarming pandemic that caused unprecedented changes in the election process. Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an emergency order requiring counties to mail a ballot to every registered voter, and lawmakers followed up with a new state law that echoed that order and went further to require counties to offer even more voting options. Secretary of State Alex Padilla has issued emergency regulations ordering counties to accept some vote-by-mail ballots as valid even if they lack a postmark.The Republican Party could have highlighted legitimate problems. Instead the CAGOP quietly installed non-official ballot boxes falsely labeled as “official” and admitted to it only after press reports, including one by this news organization, noted the presence of the suspicious containers.
The California Republican Party has managed to shoot itself in the foot and has created a needless distraction for its candidates. If it wanted to argue that our elections have lost “a variety of safeguards,” they could have found a better way to do it.
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