California Republican Party Admits It Placed Misleading Ballot Boxes Around State - The New York Times
Is it any wonder that the once Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln is now known merely as the gop?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Government officials say the receptacles are illegal and could lead to voter fraud, but the party says it will continue the practice.
State officials in California have ordered an investigation into more than 50 deceptively labeled "official" drop boxes.Credit...Mike Blake/Reuters
By Glenn Thrush and Jennifer Medina
- Oct. 12, 2020
The California Republican Party has admitted responsibility for placing more than 50 deceptively labeled "official" drop boxes for mail-in ballots in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange Counties — an action that state officials said was illegal and could lead to voter fraud.
The dark gray metal boxes have been popping up over the past two weeks near churches, gun shops and Republican Party offices, mostly in conservative areas of a deep-blue state, affixed with a white paper label identifying them as either an "Official Ballot Drop off Box" or a "Ballot Drop Box."
To the average voter, they are virtually indistinguishable from drop-off sites sanctioned by the state, which are governed by strict regulations intended to prevent the partisan manipulation of ballots.
The actions of the largely marginalized state party come at a moment when Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a bitter national struggle over voting rights, with President Trump's allies accusing Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere of undermining the integrity of the electoral process by expanding absentee voting and other measures to increase ballot access.
On Monday, California's secretary of state, Alex Padilla, and Attorney General Xavier Becerra sent a cease-and-desist order to the state- and county-level Republican parties, ordering them to remove the boxes. They also urged voters who might have unknowingly dropped off their ballots in the receptacles to sign up with the state's voter tracking website to ensure their vote is counted.
"Misleading voters is wrong regardless of who is doing it," Mr. Padilla said in a conference call with reporters, adding that the boxes "are not permitted by state law."
Mr. Becerra called the boxes "fake," adding that it was "illegal to tamper with a citizen's vote." He warned that anyone "engaging in this activity" could be subject to criminal prosecution or civil action.
Hector Barajas, a spokesman for the California Republican Party, said the party would continue to distribute the boxes, without adding any label identifying them explicitly as Republican ballot drops.
Mr. Barajas — who disclosed that Republicans were responsible for the boxes only after being bombarded by questions by reporters on Monday — said the party's actions were legal because state law did not restrict "ballot harvesting," a practice that allows a third party to collect voters' completed ballots.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have decried the practice as corrupt when Democrats have been accused of collecting bundles of ballots, which is legal in 26 states but subject to verification requirements.
Election 2020 '
What You Need to Know About Voting
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- Three Main Ways to Vote: We may be in the midst of a pandemic, but whether you vote in person on Election Day, a few weeks early, or prefer to mail in your ballot this year, it can still be a straightforward process.
- Do You Still Have Time?: Voters in 35 states can request ballots so close to Election Day that it may not be feasible for their ballots to be mailed to them and sent back to election officials in time to be counted. Here's a list of states where it's risky to procrastinate.
- Fact-Checking the Falsehoods: Voters are facing a deluge of misinformation about voting by mail, some prompted by the president. Here's the truth about absentee ballots.
"There is nothing in any of the laws or regulations cited in that advisory that indicate private organization drop boxes are not permitted," said Mr. Barajas, who blamed Democrats for blocking anti-harvesting legislation.
"The way Democrats wrote the law, if we wanted to use a Santa bag, we could," he said. "A locked heavy box seems a lot safer," Mr. Barajas said.
Mr. Padilla dismissed that claim, telling reporters that the boxes were not covered by legal protections, because they were intended to "mislead voters and erode the public trust."
State officials have not alleged that operatives from either party have engaged in the selective harvesting of ballots placed in the illegal boxes. The ballots will be counted if they are received, even if they do not have a third-party signature typically required for collected mail-in votes, Mr. Padilla said.
Republican officials purchased about 100 of the boxes in recent weeks in an attempt to boost turnout, especially in competitive down-ballot races, as party leaders fret about Mr. Trump's drag on other Republicans, an operative with direct knowledge of the effort said.
They had installed about half of them by the time Mr. Padilla and other state officials took notice over the weekend.
State officials quickly ordered an investigation into the boxes, and Mr. Padilla sent a memo to county elections officials urging them to investigate the unauthorized boxes in order to "guarantee the security and chain of custody of vote-by-mail" ballots placed in them.
In his memo, he reminded local officials that creating an illegal polling site was a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
Mr. Padilla's office received a report on Saturday that a metal box with a misleading sign suggesting that it was an official site to drop off mail-in ballots had been placed in front of the Freedom's Way Baptist Church in Castaic, northwest of Los Angeles.
And last week, a supporter of a Republican congressional candidate in Orange County, Michelle Steel, posted a picture of himself on Twitter dropping off a ballot at one of the party's boxes.
In the post, Jordan Tygh, a regional field director for the California Republican Party, flashes a thumbs-up over the caption, "Doing my part and voting early," according to The Orange County Register, which first reported on the use of the boxes.
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Is it any wonder that the once Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln is now known merely as the gop?
Is it any wonder you manage to parrot that line in so many seeds?
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No... because the "gop" proves again and again, as in this case, that is is just a bunch of goppers. (Yes, a "gopper" is just as gross as you imagine ...)
Are you a gopper?
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Trumpism is The Lost Cause
lol
TDS .... maximum effort!
Knowing that Trump supporters will probably vote in person, because their emperor has told them to do that, the ballots in the illegal boxes will most likely be collected by those who placed the boxes, and burned.
Yet ANOTHER Republican scheme to suppress the votes and prevent mail-in ballots. I wonder what they'll come up with next.
They deserve a medal from Xi Jinping for their efforts, trying to emulate China's non-voting system.
Well... This does prove that Trump was right about election fraud...
Lol .... a more oxymoronic comment i have not read on NT in awhile.
"State Sanctioned" sites in Calikakistan are allegedly chosen in a "non partisan" fashion?
Hilarious!
Is that like Texakistan only allowing one drop box for a county the size of Rhode island with 2.4 million registered voters? Talk about partisans using their government power to suppress voters.
California has free and fair elections, which is why Republicans hate it so much and lose constantly. They know the only way they have a chance is to cheat, which they do all the time, whether it's by crafting voter ID laws that "target African American voters with surgical precision" as the courts found, purging voter rolls, putting out fake drop boxes or illegally discarding/destroying ballots in counties that often vote Democrat.
Republicans are right; election fraud is real. They are perpetrating it.
Doubtful ......
In Michigan most every township already has a drop box. Every township and county. Of course my township has added a dedicated "absentee ballot" drop box as well.
Just so the afflicted can feel extra special about getting a special box to drop their ballot in i suppose.
The state's complaints are really in the small details of things like "official" wording and the like - not in the collection itself. Thanks to Democrats, the practice of "ballot harvesting" is actually legal in California. Democrats have already been collecting people's ballots and turning them into state officials on their behalf. Now Republicans are setting out to do the same thing and the Democratic Secretary of State is freaking out over it.
It has everything to do with the 'collection itself'. Any statement suggesting otherwise is foxtrotting ridiculous.
The GOP has an argument, at the least. California law is pretty vague and open-ended. Section 3017 (a)(2) of the Elections Code reads (and I'll bold the important parts)
Dropoff boxes are supposed to be provided by government officials. The text of Section 3025 reads:
But the law doesn't say the GOP can't put out its own boxes.
Since the law says a voter can give their ballot to someone else to turn in, how they do that doesn't seem to have any restrictions on it. So if Republicans want to do it with boxes, that might be legal. What the state Attorney General is objecting to is the representation that the boxes are "official." From the LA Times:
Yep. So this isn't illegal............or "cheating". It's perfectly within the laws of the state of California. Once again, Democrats poop in their own Post Toasties..........and it's glorious.
I dont think too many people doubted that Republicans would try to cheat in this election. Truthfully, there are probably a few Democrats that will try and cheat too. But it should be minor. Election officials need to take their duties more seriously. Counting mail in votes is not complicated, they just have to be observant and vigilant and have sufficient numbers of both Democratic and Republican election judges.
It never occurred to me that they would be this brazen.
It's been clear to me for a while that the Republican party would smother their own mothers in their beds if they thought it would win them the election. They have no morals, no ethics, no shame.