California Election Officials Order GOP To Remove Unofficial Ballot Boxes Set Up In Parts Of The State

Topline

California’s chief elections official has ordered the state’s Republican Party to remove its unofficial ballot drop-off boxes from various public locations while the state’s Attorney General has warned anyone who engages in vote tampering will face prosecution, a day after reports emerged of the GOP setting up such drop-off boxes at various locations in Southern California and advertising their locations via social media posts.

Republican Party leaders including President Donald Trump have consistently attacked mail-in voting ... [+] claiming, without evidence, that the process is 'rife with fraud'.

Getty Images

Key Facts

Republican officials in the state however have refused to remove the boxes claiming that they are taking advantage of California’s ballot collection law that allows anyone to collect ballots from voters and deliver them to county election offices, the Associated Press reported.

California’s Secretary of State, Alex Padilla said that his chief legal counsel has sent a letter to Republicans on Monday ordering them to remove those boxes by Thursday and provide the state with the names, addresses and birthdays of all voters who have already dropped off ballots.

The story was first reported by the Orange County Register after a regional field director posted a photo on Twitter, last week, showing him holding a ballot in front of a box with the label “Official ballot drop-off box,” writing: “Doing my part and voting early… DM me for convenient locations to drop your ballot off at!”

California law allows people to hand their ballots over to a designated third party, who can then deliver the ballot, and state Democrats have used this law to hold “ballot parties” where attendees can fill out their mail-in ballots and leave them with volunteers who can submit them at once.

The state’s law also allows county election officers to set up drop boxes, which are frequently monitored by local election officials, throughout the county where people can drop off their ballots in person.

The California GOP is using the same law to justify its use of these ballot boxes with the National Republican Congressional Committee tweeting that California Democrats were “only ok with ballot harvesting when it’s the Democrats ballot harvesting.”

Crucial Quote

Reacting to the news about the unofficial ballot drop-off boxes, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra—who is a Democrat—threatened to prosecute “anyone who knowingly engages in the tampering or misuse of a vote” the AP report added. “We hope that the message goes out loud and clear to anyone who is trying to improperly solicit, obtain, and manage a citizen’s vote that they are subject to prosecution. I’m trying to be careful with how I say this, but the reports we are hearing are disturbing,” he added.

Chief Critic

“Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes — especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes — is not just misleading to voters, it’s a violation of state law,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told the Washington Post on Monday. He later said that the GOP’s unofficial drop boxes lack protections and rules on how often the ballots are retrieved, making them vulnerable to tampering.

Key Background

While the Republican party is using the 2016 California law— that allows voters to designate a person to return their ballot for them— to defend its use of the ballot boxes, the party previously slammed the law and earlier this year sued Governor Gavin Newsom over it. The practice, which the GOP refers to as “ballot harvesting, was highlighted by President Donald Trump last month who claimed without evidence that it was proof that voting by mail is rife with fraud. The process, however, is legal in 26 states and was actually used by Trump earlier this year. In 2018, the North Carolina State Board of Elections threw out the results of a congressional election after a Republican operative was charged with tampering and filling in absentee ballots, which is illegal under any circumstance.

Breaking