Dakota Beacon

Add a new term to the election vocabulary – “ballot harvesting.” Take note: As the 2020 campaign season heats up this term will be heard more often. Why?

This term is incendiary guarantying fights along party lines. Rule of thumb: Democrat-held legislatures and governorships generally advocate for ballot harvesting. Republicans oppose. Laws favoring ballot harvesting are on the books in California, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, and Nevada among others.

What is “ballot harvesting?” Ballot harvesting is the process where organized workers or volunteers, total strangers to the target audience, collect absentee ballots from voters and deliver them to a polling place or election office. Straight forward, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Some good citizens and party leaders are so anxious to have voters participate in elections that they could care less about the integrity of the process. What matters is that “every vote should count.” Lost in the rhetoric is the understanding that, in a free country, any qualified voter has the right to vote – or not vote. Not to vote is just as much a statement as is voting. It is a free country after all.

So, why would a person choose not to vote? If a person believes they are not knowledgeable enough to vote, then they are free to choose not to. Quite often candidates and issues appear on a ballot about which the voter has scant knowledge -- county assessors, city council men and women, aldermen, judges, and issues articulated in convoluted legalese for example. More than once I have chosen to not vote for a candidate or an issue with which I was not familiar.

Enter the election volunteer, or worse, a paid functionary, appearing on the doorstep of a potential voter and offering to “assist” in completing an absentee ballot. Here is how California made ballot harvesting legal. In September, 2016, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 1921 which changed Section 3017 of the Election Code allowing any person (as opposed to those living in the voter’s household) to collect a mail-in ballot from (unlimited number of) voters.

“The Democrats passed laws in California that allowed them to harvest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of votes from people who are the least engaged politically. They have built a system that harvests millions of votes from the most apathetic, most easily manipulated, low-information voters in the electorate. And that strategy, because it worked so well, is on its way to every state in America. Count on it happening fast – wherever Democrats control a state legislature, California’s new election rules will become law. In those states, using government union money and foot soldiers, augmented with limitless funds from globalist left-wing billionaires, Republicans will be wiped out forever. The massacre will not spare countless battleground congressional districts currently held by Republicans.” American Greatness, 12/4/2108.

Steven F. Huefner, law professor stated on the Ohio State website the following, “At least three distinct kinds of fraud can occur when political operatives ‘assist’ in returning absentee ballots [i.e., ballot harvesting]. First, those collecting the ballots can intentionally discard (or conveniently lose or misplace) any ballots they suspect or know (perhaps even by opening the ballot envelopes) have been cast in favor of the ‘wrong’ candidate(s). Second, those collecting the ballots can open the ballot envelopes and change or alter whatever votes the voter originally recorded. Third, those collecting the ballots can collect unvoted ballots (or partially voted ballots) and complete the ballots themselves.”

Other efforts by Democrats to harm the sanctity of the electoral system involve challenging a proposed requirement to list citizenship on the 2020 census. They contend it would thwart some people from completing the census thus not permitting an accurate tally. Proponents argue it would discourage those who should not be in the United States from voting. Ultimately, Congressional seats and billions of dollars are at stake. The US Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in April 2019 on a suit brought by 17 states opposing the Commerce Department’s inclusion of the citizenship question in the 2020 census.

Beyond ballot harvesting and the census tally there are other Democrat efforts to devalue the election process. Several Democrat presidential contenders advocate abolishing the Electoral College. Some Democrat leaders wish to alter the composition of the US Supreme Court to ensure a “more favorable” ruling on voting laws. Bernie Sanders even wants incarcerated felons to have the right to vote.

Citing American Greatness again from December 4, 2018, “Come to California to see what’s going to roll out across America in time to guarantee a progressive landslide in 2020. It may be perfectly legal. But it’s so rigged it would make Boss Tweed blush.”

Citizen, take heed.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).