The Heritage Foundation calls it the “tool of choice for vote thieves.” The convenient, innovative, and beloved mail-in ballot has been a source of contention due to its vulnerability to manipulation.
During the 2018 midterms, Democrats in California and a Republican consultant in North Carolina used a process called "ballot harvesting" to collect mail-in ballots for voters.
But there was a big difference between the two states, as I discuss in my new book, "Power Grab." In North Carolina, ballot harvesting is illegal. Congress refused to seat the winner of the 2018 midterm election between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready and a special election was held this month to replace him. Though Republican Dan Bishop managed to win the heavily Republican district last week, the history of "cheating" by the previous candidate weighed heavily, making the race far closer than one might expect in a district with an R+8 partisan lean.
In California, by contrast, ballot harvesting was legalized by Democrats in the state legislature. They don't consider it cheating in that state. It was used to flip seven Republican seats to the Democratic column in 2018.
Democrats have long dismissed claims that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to manipulation, pointing to what they call a dearth of voter fraud convictions. Nonetheless, they could hardly ignore the North Carolina race in which a Republican campaign operative illegally collecting ballots allegedly destroyed as many as a thousand ballots supporting the Democratic candidate.
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Stealing the 2020 Election: Ballot harvesting -- California's model
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