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California is one of the only states where “ballot harvesting” is legal. [0] Party officials can submit batches of votes collected from people who are not their

California is one of the only states where “ballot harvesting” is legal. [0] Party officials can submit batches of votes collected from people who are not their family members. As you can imagine, accusations of impropriety abound. Putting partisan politics aside, I’m not sure how a rational person can look at this and conclude that it leads to fair elections. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_harvesting

daenz 7y ago
What's the argument for it?
- TechBro8615 7y ago
  I'm sure you can imagine the cynical answers to that. Non cynically, I guess the idea is it increases voter turnout? I say "guess" because I've just googled "pros of ballot harvesting," "arguments for ballot harvesting," and other varieties of the phrase, and have yet to find a real argument for it. And if the argument is increasing voter turnout, I'm not sure why it's necessary if the cost of voting is no more than dropping a ballot in your mailbox.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  From his link: "Arizona banned the practice except for family members and caregivers.". So I guess for those who can't make it to the mailbox?
- wahern 7y ago
  Dropping off your elderly parents' or neighbors' belated vote-by-mail ballot at your local polling site. Previously it was illegal to do something that simple, which with shelter-in-place has a pretty decent cost+benefit even if you disbelieve the evidence on voter fraud.
  - sio8ohPi 7y ago
    If we're still talking about California, it was legal to drop off a family member's ballot prior to AB 1921. Is there a state that allows vote-by-mail and doesn't allow family members to drop off ballots?
- panic 7y ago
  The constitution guarantees a right to vote; laws against returning other people's ballots have been found unconsitutional on those grounds: https://apnews.com/d6b75b7a1c2da695d756cb4e864cd2b8 https://apnews.com/d6b75b7a1c2da695d756cb4e864cd2b8 (full opinion if you're curious: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/27/18-15845.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/27/1...)
- jedberg 7y ago
  It allows the party to go to an old folks home and pick up all their ballots and drop it off for them, for example. Assuming good faith, that would be a service to those voters who can't otherwise get to a polling place.
  - masonic 7y ago
    It allows them to pick up only those ballots of their party's registrants and return only them, leaving the others behind. Hence the law.
chance_state 7y ago
Is there evidence that these "accusations of impropriety" materially impact elections? From my research, the outrage about votor fraud is completely overblown.
- sio8ohPi 7y ago
  Did you read the linked article? It discusses NC's 2018 9th district election, which was thrown out entirely due to ballot harvesting and tampering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_congressional_district_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    Are you sure you drew the correct lesson from the incident? There were a ton of rumors, witnesses, statistical evidence, and so forth. It sure didn't make it sound like undetected vote fraud could be common.
    - sio8ohPi 7y ago
      Dowless appears to have gotten away with a similar scheme in 2014. Moreover, I'm from a state that regularly sees serious voting abnormalities[1]. Everyone knows the elections are rigged and nothing is ever done about it. So no, I don't think undetected electoral fraud is implausible, any more than I think, say, undetected insider trading is implausible. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2019/08/30/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts-and/ https://www.salon.com/2019/08/30/probe-of-missing-georgia-vo...
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Also, those actions are electoral fraud (the people running the election do the crime), not voter fraud (the people voting do the crime).
    - sio8ohPi 7y ago
      Correct, the attacks enabled by ballot harvesting are primarily electoral fraud, not voter fraud. I never said anything about voter fraud; that was a non-sequitur introduced by the parent commenter.
faitswulff 7y ago
How is this relevant to vote by mail? Don't you just put your ballot in the mail, no middleman necessary? Assuming the USPS is still operational by then, I mean.
adrr 7y ago
How is this different than picking up people and driving them to poll? Getting as many people to vote can’t be argued as being unfair.
- masonic 7y ago
  If you're selective about who you help vote vs who you don't, it biases the result.
mehrdadn 7y ago
To you, an election where (say) only 25% of the electorate vote but there is 0 fraud according to the rules is "fair". Which it may be in some circumstances (e.g. if the reason for those not voting is solely them being lazy), but I'm sure you can imagine why a rational person might look at that and conclude it is in fact very unfair in other circumstances. It's a fact that voter turnout across the US is far too low. It has many causes, some political (like votes getting implicitly suppressed via brazen gerrymandering) and some not (like ballots just not being the easiest things to fill out), and some in-between (like indirect obstacles that make it difficult for some minorities to vote). The idea here seems to be to remove as many obstacles as possible to increase voter turnout. Of course if that happens to help your party then you'll like it and probably support it, and if it happens to help the other party then you'll dislike it and probably be against it. But at least on its face, it has a bona fide goal that any political party that seeks legitimate elections should be supporting. Compare that to brazenly unfair practices like the extreme gerrymandering we see that are clearly solely designed to manipulate election outcomes (and which might even discourage people from voting in the first place) and I think you can imagine why a "rational person" might look beyond the game rules when deciding fairness.
- TechBro8615 7y ago
  Of course I want voter turnout to be high. But I’m skeptical of any solution that lowers the scalability barrier to voter fraud. Ballot harvesting does that. Without ballot harvesting, voter fraud is difficult to scale. It requires coordination among large groups of malicious actors. But if you allow individuals to submit ballots in bulk, the scalability problem is reduced such that one bad actor can have an outsized effect on the fairness of the election. While I agree that increasing voter turnout is a noble goal, I do not agree it should be achieved “at all costs.” Everyone should vote, but everyone who does vote must know that their vote was counted, and that it was counted accurately. And nobody who did not vote should have a vote counted in their name. Ballot harvesting, IMO, seems to increase the difficulty of meeting these requirements of fairness.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I mean, your values are different, so you come to a different conclusion. I'm sure you can understand why, to other people, your position seems to be "0% voter fraud at all costs", when people have gerrymandering and other such things to deal with. So hopefully now you can see that the reason others come to different conclusions from you isn't that you're rational and they're irrational.
smitty1e 7y ago
I work as a voting officer in my county. Those ballots are legal documents and require a chain of custody for the election to be deemed fair. How we scale voting by mail in any way that protects the secrecy and security of the process eludes me. Highly skeptical, and opposed to this, especially given the context in which the idea is proffered.
- TechBro8615 7y ago
  There are some decent, simple, partial solutions. For example, it would be a good start to issue cryptographic paper receipts. If voting by mail, that means you get a receipt in the mail. If voting by machine, you get a receipt printed out. When the election is over, you should be able to use your receipt to verify that your vote was counted.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    And every election is mired in lawsuits over inevitable losses. I wish there were a way to run an experiment. Oh, there is. Try this on a couple of test states and let one of us eat crow. But in all seriousness, after the shenanigans during this administration (whichever side the reader fall on) let's not make big changes this election.

daenz 7y ago

What's the argument for it?

TechBro8615 7y ago
I'm sure you can imagine the cynical answers to that. Non cynically, I guess the idea is it increases voter turnout? I say "guess" because I've just googled "pros of ballot harvesting," "arguments for ballot harvesting," and other varieties of the phrase, and have yet to find a real argument for it. And if the argument is increasing voter turnout, I'm not sure why it's necessary if the cost of voting is no more than dropping a ballot in your mailbox.
jimbob45 7y ago
From his link: "Arizona banned the practice except for family members and caregivers.". So I guess for those who can't make it to the mailbox?
wahern 7y ago
Dropping off your elderly parents' or neighbors' belated vote-by-mail ballot at your local polling site. Previously it was illegal to do something that simple, which with shelter-in-place has a pretty decent cost+benefit even if you disbelieve the evidence on voter fraud.
- sio8ohPi 7y ago
  If we're still talking about California, it was legal to drop off a family member's ballot prior to AB 1921. Is there a state that allows vote-by-mail and doesn't allow family members to drop off ballots?
panic 7y ago
The constitution guarantees a right to vote; laws against returning other people's ballots have been found unconsitutional on those grounds: https://apnews.com/d6b75b7a1c2da695d756cb4e864cd2b8 https://apnews.com/d6b75b7a1c2da695d756cb4e864cd2b8 (full opinion if you're curious: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/27/18-15845.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/01/27/1...)
jedberg 7y ago
It allows the party to go to an old folks home and pick up all their ballots and drop it off for them, for example. Assuming good faith, that would be a service to those voters who can't otherwise get to a polling place.
- masonic 7y ago
  It allows them to pick up only those ballots of their party's registrants and return only them, leaving the others behind. Hence the law.

chance_state 7y ago

Is there evidence that these "accusations of impropriety" materially impact elections? From my research, the outrage about votor fraud is completely overblown.

sio8ohPi 7y ago
Did you read the linked article? It discusses NC's 2018 9th district election, which was thrown out entirely due to ballot harvesting and tampering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_congressional_district_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...
- greglindahl 7y ago
  Are you sure you drew the correct lesson from the incident? There were a ton of rumors, witnesses, statistical evidence, and so forth. It sure didn't make it sound like undetected vote fraud could be common.
  - sio8ohPi 7y ago
    Dowless appears to have gotten away with a similar scheme in 2014. Moreover, I'm from a state that regularly sees serious voting abnormalities[1]. Everyone knows the elections are rigged and nothing is ever done about it. So no, I don't think undetected electoral fraud is implausible, any more than I think, say, undetected insider trading is implausible. [1]: https://www.salon.com/2019/08/30/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts-and/ https://www.salon.com/2019/08/30/probe-of-missing-georgia-vo...
- Frondo 7y ago
  Also, those actions are electoral fraud (the people running the election do the crime), not voter fraud (the people voting do the crime).
  - sio8ohPi 7y ago
    Correct, the attacks enabled by ballot harvesting are primarily electoral fraud, not voter fraud. I never said anything about voter fraud; that was a non-sequitur introduced by the parent commenter.

faitswulff 7y ago

How is this relevant to vote by mail? Don't you just put your ballot in the mail, no middleman necessary? Assuming the USPS is still operational by then, I mean.

adrr 7y ago

How is this different than picking up people and driving them to poll? Getting as many people to vote can’t be argued as being unfair.

masonic 7y ago
If you're selective about who you help vote vs who you don't, it biases the result.

mehrdadn 7y ago

To you, an election where (say) only 25% of the electorate vote but there is 0 fraud according to the rules is "fair". Which it may be in some circumstances (e.g. if the reason for those not voting is solely them being lazy), but I'm sure you can imagine why a rational person might look at that and conclude it is in fact very unfair in other circumstances. It's a fact that voter turnout across the US is far too low. It has many causes, some political (like votes getting implicitly suppressed via brazen gerrymandering) and some not (like ballots just not being the easiest things to fill out), and some in-between (like indirect obstacles that make it difficult for some minorities to vote). The idea here seems to be to remove as many obstacles as possible to increase voter turnout. Of course if that happens to help your party then you'll like it and probably support it, and if it happens to help the other party then you'll dislike it and probably be against it. But at least on its face, it has a bona fide goal that any political party that seeks legitimate elections should be supporting. Compare that to brazenly unfair practices like the extreme gerrymandering we see that are clearly solely designed to manipulate election outcomes (and which might even discourage people from voting in the first place) and I think you can imagine why a "rational person" might look beyond the game rules when deciding fairness.

TechBro8615 7y ago
Of course I want voter turnout to be high. But I’m skeptical of any solution that lowers the scalability barrier to voter fraud. Ballot harvesting does that. Without ballot harvesting, voter fraud is difficult to scale. It requires coordination among large groups of malicious actors. But if you allow individuals to submit ballots in bulk, the scalability problem is reduced such that one bad actor can have an outsized effect on the fairness of the election. While I agree that increasing voter turnout is a noble goal, I do not agree it should be achieved “at all costs.” Everyone should vote, but everyone who does vote must know that their vote was counted, and that it was counted accurately. And nobody who did not vote should have a vote counted in their name. Ballot harvesting, IMO, seems to increase the difficulty of meeting these requirements of fairness.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  I mean, your values are different, so you come to a different conclusion. I'm sure you can understand why, to other people, your position seems to be "0% voter fraud at all costs", when people have gerrymandering and other such things to deal with. So hopefully now you can see that the reason others come to different conclusions from you isn't that you're rational and they're irrational.

smitty1e 7y ago

I work as a voting officer in my county. Those ballots are legal documents and require a chain of custody for the election to be deemed fair. How we scale voting by mail in any way that protects the secrecy and security of the process eludes me. Highly skeptical, and opposed to this, especially given the context in which the idea is proffered.

TechBro8615 7y ago
There are some decent, simple, partial solutions. For example, it would be a good start to issue cryptographic paper receipts. If voting by mail, that means you get a receipt in the mail. If voting by machine, you get a receipt printed out. When the election is over, you should be able to use your receipt to verify that your vote was counted.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  And every election is mired in lawsuits over inevitable losses. I wish there were a way to run an experiment. Oh, there is. Try this on a couple of test states and let one of us eat crow. But in all seriousness, after the shenanigans during this administration (whichever side the reader fall on) let's not make big changes this election.