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VIEWPOINT - Everyone is looking to the glacial pace of vote counting in California’s primary election. On the one hand, defenders of the process claim that deliberation ensures accuracy. On the other side, skeptics insist that the slow pace affords the opportunity for tampering and fraud. In fact, neither are remotely relevant in explaining why, across the board, the far-left candidates are surging and conservative and moderate candidates are fading as late mail-in-ballots are counted.
Critics have long argued that California’s election system contains vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Interest groups, primarily the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), openly declare the exact manner in which they programmatically take advantage of these vulnerabilities. The specifics of this are simple and straightforward.
- Mail-in-ballots in California are sent out without a tamper proof seal to protect ballots.
- Voter information is printed on the envelope the ballots are mailed in, not the ballots themselves.
- Voters can legally sign their ballots over to any third party, even those aligned with political organizations such as the DSA. The signature verifying that the ballot has been signed over also goes on the envelope, not the ballot.
- Third parties, even those associated with political organizations, can collect an unlimited number of mail-in-ballots. Large scale, organized collection of mail-in-ballots is called ballot harvesting.
- Canvassers can be paid to collect ballots. Direct, in-person interaction with the voter is required and canvassers must provide their name, relationship to the voter and signature on the ballot. DSA vote collection instructions indicate that the collector should write “volunteer” on the envelope. Because ballot collection often takes place outside traditional polling places, critics argue there is less transparency regarding interactions between collectors and voters.
The DSA has a well-established program for harvesting mail-in-ballots and posts instructions on their web site. Those instructions are as follows: How To: Ballot Delivery
Confirm strong candidate support
- If voting for other candidate, thank them and move on.
"Have you received your ballot already?"
- Great, Will you find it?
Will you vote now?
- Ask at least 3 times.
- "X candidate is in line with all the values in our voter guide and we need your help to change this city"
- "I want to make sure that your ballot doesn't get lost in the mail or in the city bureaucracy. If we fill it out together right now, there's an official place to sign it over to me and I can bring it to the city directly either today or first thing tomorrow morning."
Once you have successfully filled out the ballot using our voter guide, please ensure you place all of the ballot pages in the envelope provided.
Have the voter fill out the red box on the right side with their signature, date and address. YOU will fill out the top portion with your signature, name and under relationship to the voter write “Volunteer.
In the end, whether California takes one day or twenty-one days to fully tabulate all of its late returned mail-in-ballots is immaterial. What matters is that the ballots themselves are not physically secure. It is legal to pay people to collect an infinite number of these insecure ballots. And, there is no way to verify what interaction is taking place between ballot collectors and voters to ensure that the voter is not being influenced, interfered with or intimidated during the voting process.
To what degree ballot harvesting is or isn’t happening is impossible to verify under these circumstances. There is no question that the vulnerabilities exist. And, in this environment of uncertainty the consistent over-performance of far-left candidates in late return mail-in-ballots opens the door for questions about the fundamental Integrity of the voting process.
After all, Nithya Raman has already erased the seemingly overwhelming lead Mr. Pratt has amassed at the end of election night. Ms. Raman was crying on the podium at the night’s end at her apparent defeat. Now she is beaming all over the internet. Steve Hilton was the leader in the gubernatorial race with Tom Steyer a distant third. Now Steyer is the leader and Hilton looks to be eliminated from the run-off.
In race after race, election cycle after election cycle, this surge by far left candidates plays out as late return mail-in-ballots are counted. If there is an instance of a conservative or moderate candidate performing better as late returned mail-in-ballots are tabulated, I have yet to find it.
In terms of mail-in-voting in California, 2016 was the watershed year everything changed. Before then, only family members or someone living in the same household could return a mail ballot. AB 1921, passed in 2016, changed that by allowing any third party to return mail ballots opening the door for ballot harvesting on a scale no one can calculate.
There have been subsequent state bills that have further expanded mail-in-voting in California and each time Republicans put forth amendments that would make the voting process more secure, and consistently they are voted down along party lines.
It looks like a foregone conclusion that Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton will be eliminated from the electoral process in this primary election. Their supporters are likely to feel disenfranchised. The vulnerabilities that California has baked into it’s mail-in-ballot process coupled with the stated intentions of partisan political groups like the DSA to take advantage of those vulnerabilities, has left the door wide open for every sort of speculation about the integrity and fairness of California’s electoral process. Certainly, this will give rise to conspiracy theories, but is accusing people of being conspiracy theorists an effective way of restoring faith in our democratic process? Or is it more effective and sustainable to take seriously the work of establishing guardrails to ensure that our electoral process stays transparent and fair.
(Barry Cassilly is a community activist and licensed general contractor/community builder specializing in architecture and infill housing. His writings focus on governmental affairs, housing issues, and California politics.)
