Ballot Harvesting Heaven: Gov. Newsom orders mail-in ballots for all California voters
Meanwhile, California Republican Party is suing Newsom over the practice ahead of special elections.
Democrats won’t let any crisis go to waste, and their use of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic certainly demonstrates their ability to manipulate responses to ensure their continued hold on power.
While there have been several flagrant examples of rule-by-pandemic, perhaps none has been so dramatic in scale and so likely to impact the course of history as California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordering mail-in ballots be sent to all California voters due to concerns over coronavirus infection.
The governor signed an executive order that will ensure every registered vote in the state is sent an absentee ballot prior to election day, and those who choose to vote in person will have to comply with strict physical distancing measures at polling sites.
“There’s a lot of excitement around this November’s election in terms of making sure that you can conduct yourself in a safe way, and make sure your health is protected,” he said.
California is the first state in the country to enact a widespread vote-by-mail plan for November, a time top health experts fear a resurgence of the virus.
CA is now a vote by mail state.
Every registered voter will receive a mail-in ballot for the Nov election.
We’ll also provide safe in-person voting options.
The right to vote is foundational to our democracy. No one should be forced to risk their health to exercise that right.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 8, 2020
What this move has actually sparked is outrage from state Republicans, who are worried about election integrity and who have also raised the prospect of a legal challenge.
The Republican National Committee said it is reviewing its legal options “to ensure the integrity of the election.”
California Republicans have pointed to problems in the state with voter rolls and a “motor voter” program to register new voters that led to hundreds of thousands of discrepancies — although the errors reviewed did not allow anyone to vote who shouldn’t have been allowed to.
“To mail out millions of ballots to voter rolls have proven to contain alarming errors throughout the state is not a task that these Democrats can adequately manage or safely execute,” Jessica Millan Patterson, chairman of the California Republican Party, said in a statement.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that it is strongly suspected that “ballot harvesting” was thought responsible for the reliably red Orange County area to turn blue in 2018, aiding the Democrats in the takeover of the House of Representatives. Ballot harvesting was expanded in 2016 to allows anyone to collect mail-in ballots from voters and submit them in groups to polling places or election offices. Prior law restricted the practice to just relatives or those living in the same household as the registered voter.
The California Republican Party is suing Newsom over “ballot harvesting” ahead of special elections, using some pandemic-inspired arguments.
The California Republican Party is suing Governor Gavin Newsom to prohibit the practice of ballot collecting or “ballot harvesting” during two upcoming special elections in the state, arguing it stands “in direct conflict” with social distancing guidelines and Newsom’s shelter-in-place mandate to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Two weeks ago California Republican Party chairwoman Jessica Patterson sent Newsom a letter asking him to halt the practice and clarify that his order “prohibits collection of ballots,” but she said Newsom did not respond.
“The governor has dodged his responsibility,” Patterson told CBS News. “We’re hoping the courts will compel him to clarify,” she added.
The ensuing battle promises to be an important one for this country. California Globe editor Katy Grimes reports that a watchdog group has found that 458,000 dead people could be sent ballots for the November 2020 election, as well as numerous other problems.
The governor’s executive order came on the heals of the Election Integrity Project of California’s recent notice to Secretary of State Alex Padilla of the state’s failure to comply with federal voter list maintenance laws.
EIPCa’s report, based on its analysis of California’s official voter registration file, includes evidence that the coronavirus-related proposal to mail ballots to all California voters has heightened the risks to the integrity of the November 2020 election:
- Over 458,000 California registrants who have likely died or moved will be mailed ballots. These registrants have not voted or updated their registrations since November 2008 or prior. Though likely deceased or relocated, they remain classified as “active” status.
- Almost 178,000 have never voted.
- Almost 2,000 have birthdates indicating they are 105+ years old.
- Over 38,000 Californians appear to have more than one voter registration.
- 24,000 of them will be mailed two or more ballots under an all-mail scenario, because they have more than one active registration each.
Ballot harvesting practices can’t be allowed to continue and spread. They are contagion destroying liberty and justice.
Gov. Newsom boasts California is the “first state” to make this change. Perhaps that’s because other states are still functioning democracies, where new laws need to pass a Legislature.
https://t.co/jOz3UL2nkW— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) May 8, 2020
This is absurd.
The governor has no data or science to suggest that going to the polls in November will be unsafe.
He is ruling by fiat now.
MM https://t.co/E5NQN1ud0c— Melissa Melendez (@asmMelendez) May 9, 2020
When is the last time California actually cleaned and verified their roles? Which means every person registered (living, dead or moved) will get a ballot sent to every address they have on record…seems legit! LOL! EFFING CROOKS!#WakeUpAmerica
— Mark Reece (@ExTxMarine) May 8, 2020
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
“If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.”
Governor Gruesome is a Real Ghoul,
from that Trans…. country…….
Maybe the Feds need to step in and meddle in California’s affairs like they did with the south 60 years ago. Civil rights, you know.
I don’t see how we don’t have a civil war
Mr. Gonzo, as the Declaration of Independence says, it takes a long series of offenses to trigger a revolution, we’re not there there yet. Wait for the Durham report. It is only when all else fails that a final outrage will provide the reasonable impetus for such action. Patience is still a virtue and the time will be obvious to all.
Even if 100% of the Californi-unicorn vote is cast for the dems, they still will not determine the electoral college vote.
Where’s that big earthquake the National Enquirer used to predict would send California sliding into the ocean? Hell, I’d settle for a moat about now …
They tried that here in New Mexico and our state Supreme court shot them down last month.
New Mexico votes reliably Democrat in national elections, so good for you to get a sound result from your courts.
Half a million phony/dead voters on the rolls give the Dems a big advantage. There are operative who know each of those votes and will ensure that the ballot harvesters collect every one.
Add to the the usual chicanery in Dem-heavy precincts and harvesting is going to give them an advantage throughout the state.
I’d advocate that the Pubs learn these tricks but I think it’s too late in Laficornia.
Looks like California is going to manage the first complete shutout in electoral history, as no Republican manages to log even a single vote.
To be completely safe, perhaps the President should suspend mail service to the affected areas. After all, if it’s not safe to go out and vote, it’s not safe to collect or deliver mail, either.
Cheat by Mail.
If it’s not safe to send cash through the mail, why would you think it was okay to send votes.
If the polling places so unsafe as to there, perhaps they can locate their voting machines at Walmart, Sams Club, Home Depot, Lowes. They seem to be able to do crowds safely with best practices.
Not HD nor Ace Hardware. They’ve both been inundated here, with jammed parking lots and lines out the door. I don’t know quite what triggered this particular hysterical overreaction, but it’s been this way for at least a week.
Nothing will change as long as Republicans insist on being the Charlie Brown to Lucy’s football. Play the game. Harvest ballots and do it better. Then watch how fast they change their tune.
As an outsider looking in I would appreciate it if someone could explain how this gov. can get away with this election fraud?
Surely as this is the Presidential election federal law could legally challenge this ex order?
Because it isn’t fraud. It merely opens the door wide for potential fraudsters, and while common sense says they’re out there and will take full advantage you can’t prove it without catching them in the act, which is very difficult to do.
Precisely, which is why it is necessary to take legal action as a preventive action. If a capability exists, it will be abused. All mail balloting and Voter Rolls not updated for better than a decade, when combined with ballot harvesting is an open invitation to electoral fraud.
But what legal action could prevent it, if it’s permitted by state law? No, Eliza, federal law has no control over this; the election of presidential electors is up to the state legislature.
Thanks Edward and Milhouse.
Is it permitted by California law? It turned out that the Governors in New Mexico and Wisconsin did not have nearly the power they thought that they did.
To allow this is insane for so many reasons. Mail service for one. Who knows what financial condition the USPS will be in come November. Its on the ropes now and I believe they are tasking the carriers and sorters w more work and likely mistakes will be made.
The opportunity to cheat, as noted, even the appearance of such would be seriously detrimental to the credibility of our elections. After all when I mail a letter I don’t get any assurance (unless I pay extra) that it is received until it produces a reaction from the recipient. There is no expected reaction with a vote, only the expectation that it be counted. Lots of letters (votes) could go missing, be added
or altered and the voter would never know. Now when I vote in person I receive under the supervision of a election judge from both parties a paper ballot. When through voting I put my ballot into a box which I’m hoping is then tabulated by those same judges. This is what the dems want to eliminate in my opinion.
The worst excuse is the current pandemic. Dhimmicrats have blown this thing up and mishandled their reaction to it in a frightfully inept manner. So now they are using it in a manner to fundamentally alter our voting process? Terrible.
IIRC, after the first mail-in vote in Oregon, boxes of ballots (too late to count) were found in the trunk of…. “GASP”….a Corvallis postal employee’s personal vehicle.
I wonder how many of those conveniently uncounted ballots voted Republican.
I believe someone once said, and I don’t remember who, that the best way to repeal a bad law was to enforce it vigorously. Likewise, Republicans need to learn to beat the Dems at their own game. When Republicans can “harvest” more ballots than the Dems, then we will be able to sit back and watch them make our argument for us. And not until then.
As has already been demonstrated in Cali, it isn’t how many they “harvest”, it’s how many of the harvested votes get counted and how many disappear en route.
Indeed, I assume the harvesters are throwing out Republican ballots. The homeowners think they’ve voted, but their ballot never entered the system.
The video that was circulating of a Dem volunteer doing harvesting showed the honest way to do it — only collect the ballots of those who tell you they voted Democrat. If they didn’t, let them mail it themselves, or wait for the Republicans to come collect it.
Of course the dishonest way is, as you say, to collect it anyway and shred it. But the key is to ask the voter how they voted. If you’re collecting both then you don’t really have an excuse for asking the question directly, so you need to steer the conversation and get an idea of how the voter is thinking. Whereas the volunteer who was doing it right simply said outright, “I’m only collecting Democratic votes”.
Washington is vote by mail.
It’s been reliably (D) ever since.
One man, one vote, once.
I don’t know why they bothered, after they got away with obvious vote fraud to take the governorship there was no need to hide what they’re doing.
This is a super duper idea; not.
So in TX, and most Southern states, each political party has the opportunity to have a representative at each polling place. Those folks can then issue a challenge for a ballot or voter on the spot.
The challenged voter can still cast a ballot, but the ballot is marked for identification and set aside. Once all unchallenged ballots are tabulated, unless the total number of challenged ballots would be enough to change the results then those ballots are usually discarded.
The reason why is that if you start investigating challenged ballots then some will be legitimate with a minor error in a misspelled middle name while some will be totally fraudulent. So that’s one reason, admittedly anecdotal, that ‘voter fraud’ doesn’t appear as prevalent as actually occurs.
So for California folks, how does the process work there? If all these mail in ballots commuting in are potentially fraudulent precisely because the State refused to comply with the provisions of motor voter regarding the removal of illegitimate registration in the roll then what argument can the State possibly make against a blanket objection to all these ballots?
The d party may have done the voter ID fight a huge service here. Suppose these ballots are challenged, now there must be an investigation. That investigation is going to show a much higher than usual number of fraudulent ballots. This is precisely because these challenged ballots will be investigated, instead of being discarded as normal.
So if I ran the r party in CA, we would follow up the current suit with one on every double registration etc. Then post social media and print ads laying out the penalty for voter fraud. Then challenge every single ballot cast in CA. Make every single polling station or clerks office look like the Florida hanging chad fiasco. Every single ballot for every element required under statute to make it legitimate. Every single one.
Why? Well your Honor, since the state failed to remove illegitimate registrations as required by statute then the list of registered voters is flawed. Since they relied upon a flawed list, illegally I would add and despite repeated requests from multiple sources not to do so they used this flawed list to automatically mail out ballots.
Your Honor, we have a perfectly good process for eligible voters to request an absentee ballot. That process is defined by CA code x, but the Governor disregarded that statute and by executive fiat decided to mail out ballots. He substituted his judgment for that of the legislature.
Your Honor, we may or may not be under emergency conditions in November at the time of the election. Even if we were the statute doesn’t provide the Governor the authority to direct the mailing of ballots which haven’t been requested. Had that been the will of the people, then the legislature would have passed that provision. As you are aware, the legislature didn’t do so. Since every ballot was mailed unlawfully then no measure by the State can cure that defect which exists in every one of these illegally issued ballots.
Your Honor, these ballots were conceived illegally and distributed illegally utilizing a registration list the state concedes is riddled with errors to folks who didn’t request a ballot for an election more than 175 days from now, for the alleged purpose of public safety from conditions which the State has no way to prove will exist.
We simply ask Your Honor, for you to prevent the unlawful conclusion of the Governor’s illegal scheme and enjoin his usurpation of legislative power in the present in order to prevent his illegal scheme from bearing fruit in a future of his imagination.
Sorry, got carried away….
That’s a lovely future you’ve described. Too bad the CA Republican Party lacks the vision or will to implement it.
California cannot be a “vote by mail” state as California law requires that any registered voter that wishes to vote by mail must complete a vote by mail application and send it to the appropriate county election officials no more than 29 days before and no less than 7 days before an election.
California law does not provide the Governor authority to override the requirements of the law. Even in an emergency situation. No way does he have the authority to change election law. Period.
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/elections-code/elec-sect-3001.html
https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/vote-by-mail/pdf/vote-by-mail-application.pdf
This is really scary. And COVID will be used to wrap up the voter fraud in MI, WI, MN,VA, PA, NM, etc. That is the plan.
BREAKING: NEWSOM FORMING ARMY OF GOONS TO DRAG PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOMES!!!!!
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/california-announces-program-to-forcibly-remove-people-with-covid-from-their-homes-to-quarantine-centers/
Tennessee Police Arrest Citizen Who Escaped
Forced COVID-19 Detention Camp…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/09/tennessee-police-arrest-citizen-who-escaped-forced-covid-19-detention-camp/
Michigan Gretchen Whitmere
Targets Elderly Barber
For Opening Shop, Orders Closure….
Weazil Zippers
We left CA two+ years ago. We filled out the proper paperwork to be removed from the voters rolls to the county. This was a total waste….we are sent mail-in ballots for every election. Luckily we are honest and shred the ballots.
So…. you’ve voted Democrat every election since you left.
Well, when you’re sent your CA ballots this time around contact the relevant Republican election authorities and show them the ballots. They can be used as proof that the CA voter rolls are fatally flawed and that all mail in ballots sent out in reliance on the flawed CA voter registration lists can and should be declared null and void.
Or you could just cast the ballots any way you wish and send them in. Who the fuck cares. Haven’t had an honest election in decades. Don’t see that changing any time soon.
So are these postage paid, or does having to pay for a stamp constitute a poll tax?
“Every registered voter (and millions of others) will receive a (at least one) mail-in ballot for the Nov election.“ Corona virus masks may be on, but election fraud masks have come off.
This must be called what it is, Voter Fraud by Mail.
Here’s an easy check for you. Get the registered voter list for your District. Look for large numbers of voters at address. Take picture of address and ask Housing Inspector to check small home with 40+ adults supposedly living there for illegal overcrowding. Post Photo and list of adults supposedly living there. Demand answers from County registrar.
So let me get this straight. Every registered democrat in California will be receiving a mail in ballot and will also be able to vote in person as long as they obey proper “social distancing” rules.
I can see it in court now. “I’m sorry your Honor, there were more democrat votes cast in this election than there were actual registered democrats. The California general election will have to be declared null and void”.
That’s always the case with absentee ballots. You can still only vote once. If you voted in person your absentee ballot is discarded when it arrives.
Under normal circumstances I’d agree with you. But these are hardly normal times. And with thousands if not hundreds of thousands or several millions of “mail in votes” arriving at country election offices in a short period of time I highly doubt election officials will either have the time nor the resources to check each and every ballot for double votes. More than likely election officials will just count and shove as many mail in ballots through as “valid” to cover their asses and that’s about it.
It doesn’t matter how many arrive, the procedure is the same: the voter still has to be checked in the roll, the signature compared, and then marked as having voted. So if the voter is already recorded as having voted the ballot is automatically discarded.
Yes, it does matter as there are time constraints on when county election officials must certify their election results and report them to the state. They cannot change that time frame. And there is no way county election officials will have the staff necessary to cross check each and every one of the signatures on the mail in ballots for validity and not having voted twice in the time allotted.
Best that someone in California just challenges every mail in ballot as invalid (in court if necessary) and force the state to prove the validity of each mail in ballot.
Ballot harvesting in itself is not cheating. If done honestly there’s nothing wrong with it. The problem is only that it is so easy to use it to cheat, and there’s no way to catch those who do so.
I know of no evidence that the Dem ballot harvesting operation in 2018 cheated. On the contrary, the video that was circulated shows that they trained their volunteers to do it correctly. The volunteer in the video was doing it right, and said that was how she was trained to do it, and I see no reason not to believe her.
On the other hand, these are Dems we’re talking about, and cheating is what they do. So I believe, but with no evidence, that in addition to the volunteers whom they had doing it honestly they also had paid operatives who were doing it dishonestly. The honest volunteers would serve as cover for the cheating operation, which is where the real votes would be found. Again, this is pure speculation on my part. Nobody was caught, nobody talked, and the election results can easily be explained simply by the honest harvesting, and by the fact that the Republicans didn’t bother doing the same. But cheating is so easy and so risk-free that I just can’t see the Dems resisting the temptation.
But the issue here is not even harvesting. Forget harvesting, which is collecting ballots from actual voters, and delivering them (or, if you’re cheating, only delivering them if you think the vote is for your side, which you don’t actually know unless the voter told you). This is much worse than that.
Sending ballots to people who have not requested them means that a good percentage of them will not be used. The recipients are just not interested in voting. And those ballots will be easy targets for “harvesters” of a different type — those who simply lift them out of letter boxes. Or who come around to collect them, and when the person says they didn’t fill it in the “harvester” says “that’s OK, you can give it to me anyway”.
And of course there are places like nursing homes where absentee voter fraud is a long tradition — someone at the home sends in applications on behalf of all the residents, and then kindly votes for them to save them the trouble. Now they won’t even have to send in the applications!
Compared to this, harvesting is small potatoes.
Bear in mind that the fact EPICa has a lengthy list of voters who haven’t voted since 2008 and before means that no one else “voted” on their behalf, either. Such poorly maintained lists are ripe for fraud, but at least the unvoted are not (yet) fraudulent voters.
Do you want clean registration lists? Then make everyone re-register for each national election. That won’t eliminate fraudulent registrations, but it will scale them back quite a ways.
Yes. They are probably being held in reserve in case they’re needed.
Suppose someone votes by mail or has vote harvested, before the official election date, and dies before that date. Is the vote valid? Can the vote of people who are dead when the election officially takes place be counted?
Is this being checked at all?