Ballot Harvesting Undermines Election Integrity | Short Clips | PragerU

it is critical to remember that the strength of our democracy lies in the Integrity of our elections that every one of us has to have faith that our vote will count but right now there are still many states in our country that allow for something called ballot harvesting this is a A system that allows for third parties to collect and deliver ballots for other people potentially large numbers of people unfortunately ballot harvesting has allowed for Fraud and Abuse to occur her by those who could tamper with or discard ballots to try to sway an election for or against a certain candidate or party now our vote is our voice so whether in the midst of a pandemic as we are now where mail and voting is likely to drastically increase or even in a normal election no one no one should get in between a voter and The Ballot Box now while some states have prohibited vote harvesting or ballot harvesting many have not which again allows for abuse from third parties collecting and mishandling ballots this is something that we've actually seen happen in recent elections in 2016 the state of California one of the states with more registered voters than citizens became the first state to legalize the practice of ballot solicitation that is the collection and delivery of ballots by Third parties with no trace of irony this is called ballot harvesting it works like this in California organizations with a clear political agenda are legally permitted to go to a location say a nursing home or a church and collect literally Harvest ballots the third party then transports these ballots to a polling place or an election office this raises an obvious question once this third party collects the ballots what's to stop them from changing them or from just throwing out the ones they don't like guilty conscience how do we know ballot Harvesters from democratic organizations aren't destroying Republican ballots or republican har Harvesters aren't destroying Democratic ballots we don't we have no way of knowing let's look at one specific example on Election night in 2018 California Central Valley Republican Congressman David valo Held a 5,000 vote lead over his Challenger Democrat TJ Cox the margin was wide enough that the networks even called the race for valido the Republic incumbent but wait there were late ballots still to be delivered by the third party vote Harvesters when those votes came in they broke so overwhelmingly for Cox in a historically conservative District no less that Val's 5,000 vote Victory became an 862 vote loss maybe that was just a coincidence or maybe not in the first major election after ballot harvesting was allowed in California Democrats won every single congressional seat in Orange County which had been a Republican stronghold for decades a year earlier no sober person would have thought that possible