Ballots

In the last two elections ballot harvesting has come into play in a major way. The first step is to allow enough time to distribute and collect ballots. This works best when you have extended voting periods and easy voting my mail. The intention is to get more eligible voters to vote. This is of and by itself an admirable goal but it can be misused and some say is was misused. Just how this misuse is carried out can be understood in this example. Eligible voters are found from city records. The democrats have been especially active in this area so using them as the example we have. A campaign worker goes to the home of a potential voter and brings with him a voter registration form and a mail in ballot form. Each is filled out with the worker helping the voter. The registration form is mailed in and sometime later the ballot is either mailed or put into a drop box. In some cases the worker is paid by the number of ballots collected and in some cases the voter is offered a few dollars. A recount of the votes will have no effect since all ballots are filled out and signed by the voter. Parts of this example are illegal but not easily uncovered. In the Georgia governor election the campaign workers for Stacy Abrams brought in 800,000 new voters using ballot harvesting. No one knows if the worker helped the voter fill out the ballots or not.