Amid all the postmortem declarations on the right that Republicans have to get good at ballot harvesting so we can beat Democrats at their own game, there is a deafening silence on the matter of illegal ballot harvesting. The omission is as mind-boggling and offensive as a discussion of immigration that doesn’t differentiate between legal and illegal immigration. Yet in too many crucial races, the margin by which the Democrat candidate claims victory is often small enough that a timely crackdown on illegal ballot harvesting could have made the difference.
After senescent basement gimp Joe Biden somehow conjured up 81 million votes in 2020, one would have thought Republicans would get serious about this issue. But now the 2022 midterm elections have come and gone, and with them, a history- and sentiment-defying turnout for Democrats, and I am once again wondering why the matter has been left unaddressed. Especially in states with Republican-controlled state offices — how have there not been investigations, indictments, and trials of illegal ballot harvesters?
Let us first stipulate that, obviously, in every case where it appears there has been large-scale illegal ballot harvesting, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The problem is that no one is ever brought to trial, where their guilt might be proven.
So now, in order of least to most blatant possible illegal ballot harvesting, here are the top three cases I can’t believe aren’t being prosecuted.
3: Maricopa County, 2022 Midterms
In Arizona, it is a felony to collect other people’s ballots unless the person collecting the ballot is a family member, lives in the same household, or is a caregiver. Yet not long after the 2022 Midterm Elections, a self-proclaimed grassroots group calling itself We the People AZ Alliance posted a video (below). The 8-minute compilation of surveillance camera clips shows car after car after car driving up to a ballot drop box into which the drivers deposit multiple ballots.
Some drop the ballots in one by one, some simply shove in a stack, and some fan out the ballots in front of the box and take a picture before depositing them — an alleged requirement for harvesters who are getting paid by the vote. This goes on day after day, with the earliest clip stamped Oct. 23 through Election Day. And this is only one drop box.
Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable, legal explanation for all these multi-voters. But we’ll never know unless there’s an investigation. And with Democrats eking out control of the Arizona governor and secretary of state offices in this election, that’s not bloody likely now.
2: Orlando, Fla.
In October — just weeks before the midterm elections — I wrote about jaw-dropping allegations of ballot harvesting in the Orlando, Fla., area:
[The Office of Election Crimes and Security] investigation was launched after Cynthia Harris, a former candidate for Orange County Commissioner, filed a sworn affidavit with the Florida Secretary of State’s office. In her affidavit, Harris described a long-standing, systemic ballot-harvesting operation in the Orlando area’s African-American communities.
As I wrote at the time, Harris’s affidavit, which she swore out in August, “served up plenty of what sure sounds like actionable information and evidence.” In an in-depth report, Just the News noted:
In her sworn affidavit, Harris identifies specific individuals who direct and act as ballot brokers and were paid to collect ballots and provides intricate details on how the system allegedly works, along with emails, receipts, video footage and other evidence.
Sounds like a slam-dunk, right? The matter was referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement… where it sits to this day. In that time, a midterm election has been conducted. How can Florida — a state that has grown crimson red in recent years — account for such inaction, allowing these alleged organized, entrenched, and felonious ballot harvesters to keep doing their thing and compromising the integrity of a major election? One would think that an expedited investigation and arrests would have been a no-brainer under those circumstances. What gives?
Related: People Who Can’t Fill Out an Absentee Ballot Correctly Shouldn’t Have Their Votes Counted
1: Atlanta, Ga., 2020 Election & 2021 Senate Run-off
As with the previous two states in this article, Georgia has outlawed ballot harvesting. And here, too, possible rampant illegal ballot harvesting occurred. I wrote about this case previously:
Doing the work that the media and law enforcement wouldn’t, [non-profit election integrity organization] True the Vote obtained security camera footage of the ballot boxes as well as commercially available cell phone geolocation data. By comparing the information, the group identified thousands of [alleged] ballot harvesters, called “mules,” who stuffed multiple ballot boxes with bundles of votes.
In Georgia, True the Vote located a witness, whom they refer to as John Doe, who told them he was paid $10 per vote he collected — and who earned thousands of dollars — ahead of both the Nov. 3 general election and the Jan. 5 runoff Senate election.
By November 2021, True the Vote had enough confidence in its evidence that it filed a complaint with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. My colleague Chris Queen wrote:
True the Vote presented Raffensperger with evidence that activists and nonprofit organizations conspired to engage in “ballot harvesting” by collecting and delivering absentee ballots by the thousand, often in the dead of night, to drop boxes that the state set up during the throes of the pandemic.
Raffensperger took up the investigation in early 2022 and seemed to be pursuing it in earnest. But in April, he subpoenaed True the Vote for the identity of the confidential whistleblower, among other proprietary data, leading to protracted negotiations. And federal partisans have been spinning Raffensperger’s wheels with subpoenas to participate in their schemes to destroy former President Trump.
So where does the investigation stand now? PJ Media reached out to True the Vote founder and president Catherine Engelbrecht. “Unfortunately, as of now, the investigations have gone nowhere,” says Engelbrecht. “The investigator assigned to review our complaints, filed in 2021, said that our data and analysis were of no interest, and without handing over the name of a confidential informant, they would not move forward.”
At this point, one wonders if there exists evidence of any sort that is compelling enough to generate a serious investigation, let alone prosecution. Catching numerous people on video stuffing multiple ballots into dropboxes, and gathering and analyzing geolocation data showing election-period travel patterns between harvesting hubs and dropboxes apparently isn’t good enough.
The tragedy here is that the longer Democrats get away with this massive illegal ballot harvesting — if that’s what this is — the more elections they’ll “win,” the more power they’ll accrue, and the more state offices they’ll control. At this pace, if an investigation ever does get to the level of prosecution, there will be no one left in a position of power who isn’t a partisan Leftist. But then again, with the inaction from Republicans currently in a position to act, what’s the difference?
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