The Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and the Florida GOP won a federal court victory upholding Florida’s ban on ballot harvesting.
Priorities USA, a progressive advocacy group, and other Democrat plaintiffs dismissed their claims in Nielsen v. DeSantis, a lawsuit challenging Florida’s ban on ballot harvesting which also aimed to force the state to count ballots that arrived after Election Day. The plaintiffs also dropped their claim that Florida needed to provide pre-paid postage on vote-by-mail ballots.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Sunday:
Today’s victory is a win for Florida voters and a win for election integrity. Democrats’ assault on our elections process is not based on fact or reason, which is why they are dismissing every claim in their radical suit. The RNC will continue to step in and fight back against Democrat attempts to circumvent existing law and weaken our elections process.
The RNC highlighted a deposition, which they say weakened the suit, in which a Yale University student claimed that he was disenfranchised by having to travel to a post office to mail his ballot, “even though there was a mailbox in front of his house or a post office six blocks from his house.”
The GOP also noted that Florida will have to highlight “election integrity measures,” including the ballot harvesting ban, in a public relations campaign.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview in June that mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are “ripe for corruption.”
Davis said:
I’m very concerned, and it’s ironic that we’ve had the same election reforms that we’ve had in the disastrous H.R. 1; the same election reforms that have been proposed by Democrats for every coronavirus bill. Now, if it was proposed last January before everyone knew that coronavirus existed, why is it an emergency now? And when you look at some of the plans that they have proposed, which is nationwide mail-in voting and nationwide ballot harvesting, we’ve seen examples of political operatives taking advantage of the ballot harvesting process and fraudulently making sure that ballots don’t get to the ballot box.
He added, “It’s wrong; it’s ripe for corruption. It’s been corrupted.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.