I do not normally write about tweets, but there were a couple this past weekend that are worth mentioning since they cover differing views about important topics, including HR1 and ballot harvesting. The first was from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R – TX), who claimed in a reply to another member of Congress that HR1 “would legalize vote harvesting across the entire country.”
As I have previously noted, ballot Harvesting “involves political operatives going to people who have requested absentee ballots but have not yet voted, collecting those ballots, and (presumably) delivering them to the local board of elections.”
Dan McCready, the once and future Democratic nominee in the Ninth Congressional District, responded by stating that “ballot harvesting is not in HR1” and used the opportunity for a gratuitous (and presumably good-natured) inter-service dig.
McCready is correct; ballot harvesting is not addressed in HR1, but it should be.
A couple members of Congress, including Mark Walker (R-NC), attempted to add amendments addressing ballot harvesting to the bill but those amendments were rejected by the Committee on House Administration. Walker noted in his response to that rejection the pressing need to address ballot harvesting:
We cannot create election reform aimed at making our system more secure without tackling the clear problem that currently exists with ballot harvesting. It opens the door to ballot manipulation by allowing an unsecure delivery service from your home to the polling precinct.
Ballot harvesting is pernicious activity that should be curtailed. Without ballot harvesting, there would be no opportunity for political operatives to fill in vote choices on voters’ ballots or exert undue influence on voters in their homes. It is a shame that the majority in the House of Representatives did not choose to address it.
