Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has introduced a plan to effectively ban ballot harvesting ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
This week, Gabbard introduced the Election Fraud Prevention Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), that would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to ban federal payments to states that allow ballot harvesting.
Ballot harvesting, which a Michigan judge cleared for use in the election on Friday, allows political operatives to collect and deliver as many ballots as they want so long as they are not paid based on the number of ballots they deliver. The loophole allows these operatives to be paid in most cases.
Gabbard said the reform is vital to ensuring that special interest groups do not corrupt the voting process for voters.
Gabbard said in a statement.:
This bill protects assistance from family members, household members, and caregivers as well as election officials and mail carriers acting in their official capacity. Voters will still have assistance, if they need it, to turn in their vote, but this bill makes sure that third-party special interest groups don’t get between voters and the ballot box.
The plan would require that states only permit mail-in ballots to be handled by election officials, mail carriers, family members, and caregivers of the voter.
Nevada’s June primary shows huge issues with mail-in voting. In Las Vegas, Nevada, more than 223,000 mail-in ballots were deemed “undeliverable” in the election — about 17 percent of the total number of mail-in ballots sent out to voters, unsolicited.
Federal election data reveals that since 2012, about 28.4 million mail-in ballots have gone missing in each of the last four election cycles. According to Pew Research Center analysis, there are potentially 24 million ineligible or inaccurate voter registrations on state voter rolls.
Recent data has not shown a compelling public health justification for mail-in voting. In Wisconsin’s April election, only 52 of more than 400,000 voters and poll workers were confirmed to have contracted the Chinese coronavirus. None of those cases were fatal. This equals an infection rate below two-hundredths of one percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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