Voting + Parity + Mail-in + Harvest Balloting= Disaster

Over the last month I have over and over been witness to one of the biggest mistruths during  the 2020 Presidential campaign and that says a lot. ” The cases of voter fraud concerning mail in balloting is a  very rare.”  You got to be kidding me.

Partial Excerpts below are from the book referenced  above. “The American Citizens Handbook on Immigration  

“Lets address this recipe for disaster one variable at a time. 

Parity- 

       Ever hear this excuse when voting comes around. ” my vote doesn’t count “, “voting is like putting your finger in a glass of water and then pulling it out”.  I in a previous life, felt the same. However, we’re not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

In 2016, 61.4 percent of the citizen voting-age population reported voting, a number not statistically different from the 61.8 percent who reported voting in 2012

In the aftermath of Clinton’s loss, some Democrats have argued that the low voter turnout was driven by Republicans’ voter suppression efforts, such as strict voter ID laws and early voting cuts. But the research shows that these types of efforts have little to no impact on voter turnout. And, again, US voter turnout has been fairly stable in presidential elections — typically fluctuating between around 55 and 60 percent.

Voter participation also depends on the state where you vote. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis on state participation, fewer Americans vote when their states are less competitive in races between Democrats and Republicans.

While solutions to the voting dilemma remain fluid, the turnout rate in the U.S. may also come down to the age of the country’s democracy. One Harvard University study found that citizens from advanced democratic nations tend to abstain from voting.

Here’s a list of the 5 closest 2016 states, according to The Cook Political Report’s running tally, ranked from narrowest margin by percentage to widest:

1. Michigan- 0.3 percent

Trump 47.6 percent, Clinton 47.3 percent

Difference: 13,080 votes

      2.New Hampshire- 0.4 percent

Clinton 47.6 percent, Trump 47.2 percent

Difference: 2,701 votes

3. Wisconsin 1 percent

Trump 47.9 percent, Clinton 46.9 percent 

Difference: 27,257 votes

4. Pennsylvania 1.2 percent

Trump 48.8 percent, Clinton 47.6 percent

Difference: 68,236 votes (99 percent reporting)

5. Florida 1.2 percent

Trump 49 percent, Clinton 47.8 percent

Difference: 114,455 votes

One could say that those numbers put to rest the excuse “my vote doesn’t count” 

A excellent example is the 2018 democratic primary in the 14th congressional district, when incumbent and well known Joseph Crowley was upset by newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The registered voters turned out in a anemic 13%, allowing the challenger to win with just under 17,000 votes.

The coup de gras is the 2000 Presidential campaign between George Bush and Al Gore. The former took the state off Florida by only 575 votes, which gave him the  states 25 electoral votes those  votes put Bush over the top  of the 270 threshold by  one. If Florida had been in Gores camp he would have surpassed the 270 threshold by 21 and history would have taken a right turn.

When our elections become as tight as they have been, truly each vote matters.

With that being said, as citizens of this great country we need to be ever vigilant in this privilege, to make sure it’s not corrupted.

Mail-in Balloting

As The Washington times article “Time to tighten absentee, mail-in and early voting rules” released on November 17th, 2018 points out.   Until the 1980s, the majority of American voters — save for those facing the most dire of extenuating circumstances — had to physically travel to the polls to cast their ballots, and they had to do so on Election Day itself.

We need to get back to those times.

The total number of Americans who voted early or who cast absentee or mail-in ballots rose from 24.9 million in 2004 to 57.2 million in 2016, according to an October 2017 report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The total number of Americans who voted early almost doubled between 2004 and 2016, from 10.2 million to 24.1 million, according to this same report. And by 2016, the EAC found, the trend toward bypassing the physical voting polls on the designated voting day had escalated to such a point that 16 states reported more than 50 percent of the ballots came by way of early, absentee or mail-in voting.

Here’re some more shockers: Nearly 95 percent of Colorado voters cast ballots early, by mail and with an absentee allowance in 2016. For Arizona, the percentage that same year was 75; for Washington and Oregon, almost 98 percent and 100 percent, respectively; for Nevada, more than 69 percent; for Florida, just over 68 percent.

The list goes on.

What’s happening is that voting is becoming about as humdrum as picking up the take-out from Peking Chinese.

What’s happening, too, is chaos.

“[One] question surrounding [Voting By Mail] is whether it increases voter fraud,” MIT’s Election Lab wrote. “There are two major features of VBM that raise these concerns. First, the ballot is cast outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater. Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is not as secure as traditional in-person ballots. These concerns relate both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission.”

Don’t scoff. It happens.

As MIT cites, in March of 1997, the New York Times reported how Georgia’s lax absentee voting laws enabled “dozens [to vote] despite felony convictions that made it illegal for them to cast ballots.” The same newspaper reported a year later, in October of 1998, that “18 Are Arrested in 1997 Miami Ballot Fraud” on allegations they were “acting as false witnesses to the signing of absentee ballots cast in the mayoral elections.”

Democrats in particular like to pretend that election shenanigans don’t occur, that voter identification laws are discriminatory and senseless, and that mail-in, absentee and early voting allowances are crucial to the counting of every vote, as they like to say.

But stretching out Election Day into Election Week, or Election Month — and ultimately, to the inevitable courtroom Candidate A v. Candidate B drama — doesn’t seem to serve voters, citizens, the country or the Constitution.

Rather, it leads to disenchantment with the whole voting process.

I must digress here, as I find the proponents for mail-in voting to be  somewhat correct.  The ramifications from mail in balloting in the past have been minimal and regulated to more local elections. With that said, that was “BH”(before Harvest Balloting). Ballot Harvesting has the potential to raise the corruption and fraud in a election exponentially. 

Ballot Harvesting

Ballot harvesting” is political jargon for a practice in which organized workers or volunteers collect absentee ballots from certain voters and drop them off at a polling place or election office. Coined by California Republicans, the term carries a negative connotation to suggest improprieties and even election fraud. The conservative site Townhall.com called it the California Democrats’ “latest election-stealing tool.” The San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board took a different view, calling it “a sinister-sounding way of saying their opponents turned out more votes than they did” in one recent editorial

In 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB1921, which legalized the so-called practice of “ballot harvesting.” Previously, only a family member or someone living in the same household was permitted to drop off mail ballots for a voter, but the new law allowed anyone – including political operatives – to collect and return them for a voter.

The practice is so common, harvesters even have their own region-specific names. In Florida, they’re known as “boleteros.” In Texas, they’re called “politiqueras.”

In the Article from The Federalist, December 14th  ,2018 How Ballot-Harvesting Became The New Way To Steal An Election, Eric Eggers 

Brings these  3 points home. 

*In Orange County, an estimated 250,000 harvested ballots were reportedly dropped off on Election Day alone. County Republican Chairman Fred Whitaker claimed the 2016 law “directly caused the switch from being ahead on election night to losing two weeks later.”

*One interaction caught by a Santa Clarita family’s doorbell camera suggested how harvesting can work in practice. A harvester, identifying herself as Lulu, asks for Brandi, and says she is there to collect her ballot, explaining that there is “this new service, but only to, like, people who are supporting the Democratic Party.”

* In Missouri, Democratic state Rep. Penny Hubbard, a member of a St. Louis political dynasty known for ballot harvesting, was challenged and ultimately ousted in 2016 by progressive Bruce Franks, a protester in the Ferguson unrest. Absentee-ballot handling irregularities had handed her a delayed 90-vote win, even though Franks won 53 percent of the vote on Election Day.

Also, for example, the race between former Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democrat T. J. Cox in California’s rural 21st district. When polls closed, Valadao led Cox by 6,000 votes — or 8 percent. That margin was wide enough for media outlets to call the race for Valadao.

However, late ballots delivered by third-party groups broke so heavily for Cox that he ultimately eked out an 843-vote victory. The results after ballot harvesting were very different from the polling before the race and since. In a July 2019 NRCC survey, Cox was polling at just 36 percent, while 52 percent said they would support “a potential Republican challenger.” Valadao has since filed for a rematch.

House speaker Paul Ryan had a interesting take on the some California midterm elections. see the following taken from  Fox News article entitled————————————————— “Ballot Harvesting Bounty: How Dems apparently used the election law change to rout  California Republicans”- December 3rd, 2018

 Following the drubbing they took in the midterms, some Republican leaders in Washington have expressed confusion over what happened in California.

We were only down 26 seats (nationally) the night of the election and three weeks later, we lost basically every California race,” outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., told the Washington Post. “Point being, when you have candidates that win the absentee ballot vote, win the day of the vote, and then lose three weeks later because of provisionals, that’s really bizarre.”

Ryan added: “When you win the absentee ballots and you win the in-person vote, where I come from, you win the election…I’m not saying there’s anything nefarious about it, because I just don’t know, but we believed we were up about six seats in California the night of the election, now I think we lost just about every single one of those.”

I truly believe if the Citizens in this country were aware of the manipulation and deceit involved with this practice, they would halt it on a heartbeat.

I have chosen the next article to finish this segment, I felt it tells the story the best. Hope you agree.

The Heritage Foundation————-Integrity Vote Harvesting: A Recipe for Intimidation, Coercion, and Election Fraud- October 18th, 2019

The 27 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized vote (or ballot) harvesting are handing party activists, campaign managers, consultants, and other political guns-for-hire with a vested political or monetary interest in winning an election the ability to manipulate the outcome through intimidation and coercion of voters, or the outright theft and forgery of their ballots. It is a dangerous and foolish public policy that threatens the integrity of elections. It should not be implemented by state legislatures—and should be prohibited in the states that currently allow it.

Banning vote harvesting has been upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

But 27 states and the District of Columbia expressly allow vote harvesting by permitting someone other than the voter or a member of her family—which includes party activists, campaign managers, and consultants—to pick up a completed absentee ballot from the voter and deliver it to election officials. Twelve of these states “limit the number of ballots an agent or designee may return,” but there is no information available on whether that limitation is actually enforced.

The 12 states are Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia.

The differing approaches to the return of absentee ballots can be seen in the contrast between North Carolina and California. In addition to the voter, North Carolina only allows “a voter’s near relative or the voter’s verifiable legal guardian” to return an absentee ballot.

California had a similar law, but amended it in 2016, effective in the 2018 election.

 Prior to the change, only the relatives of a voter or someone living in the same household could return an absentee ballot.  But California eliminated that limitation and now allows a voter to “designate any person to return the ballot.”

Illegal Vote Harvesting in North Carolina

Even though vote harvesting is illegal in North Carolina, what happened in the 9th Congressional District race provides an object lesson in what can happen when campaign operatives have access to the absentee ballots of voters, just as predicted by the Miami–Dade grand jury.

In that race, Mark Harris (R) was running against Dan McCready (D). Despite the 900-vote lead that Harris had over McCready at the end of the election, the North Carolina State Board of Elections refused to certify the race because of accusations of fraud and vote harvesting by Leslie McCrae Dowless, who was working for the Harris campaign.

The election board actually overturned the results and ordered a new congressional election in that district (as well as in two local contests in Bladen County) after holding hearings that produced evidence of absentee ballot fraud.

 Dowless and seven other individuals were indicted on charges of obstructing justice and unlawfully possessing absentee ballots for the purpose of “scheming to illegally collect, fill in, forge and submit mail-in ballots” from voters, as well as committing perjury by lying to the state election board in sworn testimony.

The testimony before the board included Dowless’ stepdaughter who admitted that she filled out blank or incomplete ballots for Republican candidates.

 Additional evidence collected by the board indicated that Dowless and his co-conspirators submitted absentee ballot request forms on behalf of voters and then gathered unsealed and unwitnessed (and blank or incomplete) ballots directly from voters. Those ballots were then filled out in Dowless’s office before being mailed in small batches at post offices geographically close to where the voter lived to avoid any warning signs that this was a vote harvesting operation.

 Dowless collected several hundred ballots, paying his workers for their criminal activity: “$150.00 per 50 absentee ballot request forms and $125.00 per 50 absentee ballots collected.”

All of these actions, which resulted in forged, fraudulent, and improperly completed absentee ballots being submitted as votes, would have been even harder to detect had vote harvesting been legal in North Carolina, as it is in California. There might have been no basis on which to open an investigation, which ultimately uncovered all of the evidence about the mishandling, completing, and forging of absentee ballots. It should also be noted that the state board had referred Dowless to prosecutors for alleged misdeeds in the 2016 election, but no action was taken then.

Illegal Vote Harvesting in Texas

Texas law allows an absentee ballot to be personally delivered to election officials by the voter; someone “related to the voter within the second degree by affinity or the third degree by consanguinity”; someone registered to vote at the same address as, or physically living with, the voter; or someone “lawfully assisting a voter who was eligible for assistance.” The “official carrier envelope” (containing the completed absentee ballot) cannot be “collected and stored at another location for subsequent delivery” to election officials.

In 2016, a former city commissioner in Weslaco, Texas, Gaudalupe Rivera, was convicted of illegal “assistance” for filling out absentee ballots for voters in an election he won by only 16 votes. A new election was ordered, and Rivera lost.

 Four vote harvesters, or politiqueras, as they are known in Texas, are currently being prosecuted in Tarrant County for fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots from older voters using intimidation, false pretenses, and forged signatures. They are accused of subsequently marking those ballots “without the voter’s consent or knowledge.”

This scheme came to light only because of an “unlikely alliance” between a former Democratic state representative (who was defeated in a March 2014 primary by 111 votes), several Democratic consultants, and Direct Action Texas, a Tea Party-backed organization.

 They went through the time-consuming task of reviewing applications for absentee ballots and discovered that “the applications were filled out in a machine-like fashion, each address and name of the requestor scrawled in identical handwriting on scores of ballots.”

And how do the vote harvesters find the absentee ballot voters they want to target? One example is demonstrated by the 2017 federal bribery conviction in McAllen, Texas, of a postal carrier. Noe Olvera was paid $1,000 by a campaign worker for a list of the names and addresses of absentee ballot recipients on his postal route.

It gets Better in 2020