Harvested, Not “Stolen,” and That’s a Bigger Problem

Another close election flipped for Democrats several days after “Election Day.” No, it wasn't likely "stolen," but it was "harvested."

Many of us saw it coming after surprising results from “Election Day.”

At this writing, another Republican lost after a painfully slow recount in an all-mail ballot election, several days after “Election Day,” a now-quaint notion. Thanks to all manner of early voting schemes, in person and via mail, we now have “Election Season.” No other developed democratic republic conducts elections this way. Several states with mostly all-mail balloting - California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and others - are taking days, if not weeks. Other states, such as North Carolina, allow up to 9 days to receive and count last-minute mail ballots.

On Saturday, four days after voting “closed,” and just as soon as incumbent US Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto caught up with and passed GOP challenger Adam Laxalt, the election was called. And it’s happened in other races, especially in states with all-mail balloting, such as California (several congressional races) and Oregon (governor’s race). Democrats are guaranteed to keep control of the US Senate, no matter what happens in the Georgia Senate runoff. They might even gain a seat if Republican Herschel Walker is not successful. And they might keep control of the House, although that is less likely.

What a mess. No wonder growing numbers of Americans - except Democrats, interestingly - are losing confidence in the integrity of their elections.

Author, a military historian and senior fellow at both Stanford University and Hillsdale College, Victor Davis Hanson, outlines it best in his post-election analysis:

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, American elections radically changed to mail-in and early voting. They did so in a wild variety of state-by-state ways. Add ranked voting and a required majority margin to the mess and the result is that once cherished Election Day balloting becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Election Night also no longer exists. Returns are not counted for days. It is intolerable for a modern democracy to wait and wait for all sorts of different ballots both cast and counted under radically different and sometimes dubious conditions.

The Democrats—with overwhelming media and money advantages—have mastered these arts of massive and unprecedented early, mail-in, and absentee voting. Old-fashioned Republicans count on riling up their voters to show up on Election Day. But it is far easier to finesse and control the mail-in ballots than to “get out the vote.”

Angry recriminations are already underway. Defeated GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters (R-AZ) vented on Fox New’s Tucker Carlson show, blaming Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell for not directing independent spending from his leadership PAC (the Senate Leadership Fund) to Arizona. At the same time, the SLF directed $6 million to attack Alaska GOP challenger Kelly Tshibaka, who sought to unseat incumbent US Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Blake Masters might ask how much of Donald Trump’s $161 million raised for his campaign fund was invested in support of Masters’ election (less than $3 million) and whether it helped or hurt. Trump only spent $14 million from his haul on independent expenditures to bolster his favorite GOP candidates. His former boss, Peter Thiel, who invested heavily in the GOP primary, spent nothing for the general election.

Senator McConnell pretty much drained the Senate Leadership Fund of its $230 million spent to help GOP Senate candidates.

But Masters’ and others’ anger is misplaced. First, it is unwise to rely on independent expenditures for their elections. McConnell spending money in your state is no guarantee of victory. The Senate Leadership Fund spent $47 million on negative ads against Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. How did that work out? Or the $9 million spent to promote General Don Bolduc’s failed campaign in New Hampshire, on top of another $6 million to attack incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan? Ads and political spending don’t elect candidates. Voters do.

Ultimately, candidates rise or fall based on their strengths and weaknesses. The rise and dominance of outside special interest money, mostly from wealthy donors, to fund independent campaigns is another scourge of our devolving election systems, a topic for another day.

But second, anger at legislative leaders is misplaced for the inability of GOP party leaders to fully address their real problem: Democrats have mastered the art of “vote by mail” ballot harvesting, seizing on the opportunities provided by the Covid pandemic. Republicans prefer in-person Election Day voting (a few of us embrace early “in-person” voting). Many of us don’t trust the mail.

Voting by mail complicates the entire election process. It might make voting easier for some people, but the evidence is in, and it’s not pretty. It strains and taxes election administrators and workers, slows counting, invites errors and malfeasance, and undermines integrity in our elections.

Republicans see their votes as currency earned and protected, guarded, treasured, and invested wisely. Democrats, generally, not so much. When it comes to voting, they’re happy to mail it in, figuratively and literally. Election “integrity” programs that get in their way, such as voter identification and signature verification, are anathema. The elections that predominate in Europe mainly provide no early voting nor absentee balloting. But you try to curb voting by mail and wait for screams of “voter suppression” and racism to be hurled your way, and worse. Instead, they’re happy to pile demands on stressed voting systems, including same-day voter registration and “ballot curing.”

For all its infamous problems in the 2000 presidential campaign between Al Gore and George Bush, Florida has figured it out.

Suppose people just voted in person, early or otherwise, with reasonable deadlines to register before an election and count mail ballots. In that case, most of these issues could be handled more effectively and efficiently. We might know the winner by election night. Imagine that. “Easy to vote, hard to cheat” remains a reasonable pair of policy objectives.

Democrats have seized on this cultural divide over mail or in-person voting a substantial electoral advantage. First, they and their allied organizations, many funded directly and indirectly by George Soros, have long advocated for dubious “vote at home” and “vote by mail” schemes that are wrought with integrity issues, excessive burdens on election officials, and an invitation to shenanigans. And they have built an infrastructure around promoting, tracking, cultivating, and curing ballots and less on poll turnout. Republicans are catching up in places like California and other “vote at home” jurisdictions, but most of their voters still prefer the security and confidence of voting in person.

And make no mistake, voting by mail - or “voting by home,” as some organizations call it - is in vogue. From the National Vote at Home Institute:

Our forecast remains: Mailed-out ballot activity will increase at least 40% in 2022 versus 2018 levels – to an estimated 60 million mailed-out, with over 42 million returned. Today, the mailed-out number hit 58.5 million.

The MOBET tool presents mailed-out ballot totals – and eventual return rates – in four categories:

9 “Vote at Home” (VAH) jurisdictions, where every active registered voter receives a ballot in the mail automatically for every election

6 “No Excuse – Single Sign-Up” (NE/SSU) states, where any voter, through a single application, can sign up to automatically receive ballots for all future elections

21 “No Excuse” (NE) states, where all voters are eligible to receive a ballot, but must request them for each specific election or every year

15 “Excuse Required” (ER) states, where most voters are ineligible to apply for a mailed-out ballot, unless they meet a specific legally acceptable excuse

*VAH = CA, CO, DC, HI, NV, OR, UT, VT, WA
*No Ex-SSU = AZ, IL, MD, MT, NJ, VA
*No Ex = AK, FL, GA, ID, IA, KS, ME, MA, MI, MN, NE, NM, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, WI, WY
*Ex Req.= AL, AR, CT, DE, IN, KY, LA, MS, MO, NH, NY, SC, TN, TX, WV

There’s no use trying to curb vote by mail - that horse is out of the barn, and any attempt to do so will be seen as voter suppression or worse (racist!). But there are things Republicans and conservatives can do to make sure it is fair. Besides, of the roughly 100 million votes this election, about 51.8 percent (so far) are for Republicans - not far from the GOP likely majority of US House seats, which could be anywhere from 219 to 226 seats.

Republicans not only have to up their game on early mail voting, as they appear to have done in states like Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and elsewhere. States also need to consider changes to clean up counting and administration, especially in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Here are a few suggestions.

Clean voter rolls regularly

Governor Glenn Youngkin claims that Virginia’s voter rolls are cleaned weekly. Not sure if that’s hyperbole, but state election departments should routinely match their voter rolls to any number of reliable databases for tracking deaths, relocations, and other changes. States already have compacts that can share voter registration information to catch duplicates. When I registered in Virginia two years ago, I noted, as requested, that my previous registration was in Pennsylvania. Yet I remained on Pennsylvania’s notoriously dirty registration list for nearly two years. Federal laws are being ignored.

Resist “Vote at Home” distribution schemes

It’s too late for the nine states listed above, but automatically sending ballots - not just applications for ballots - to voters invites problems. The US Postal Service allows you to change your voter registration and mailing address. While the US Postal Services accurately delivers about 99 percent of mail, there is always the possibility that it may be lost, destroyed, or stolen. Between 2017 and 2020, mail theft increased by 600 percent. Taking away voting in person denies voters the safest option. Tell your state legislators to oppose these schemes that invite mail theft, ballot intimidation, and harvesting by third parties, which is still illegal in many states (not California, sadly).

Alabama appears to be the only state in the nation where only the voter can return his or her ballot. Most states allow voters to choose others, with varying restrictions.

Remember Kelly’s Rule: The more people handle your ballot, the more likely it is to be lost or uncounted.

Require voters to request an absentee or mail ballot

I voted by mail for years until 2020, when I realized Kelly’s Rule, and was shocked at the unilateral changes in mail balloting being made by Pennsylvania officials, where I lived at the time. Still, the state required me to apply for a ballot, including listing my driver’s license number. This allows local officials to verify my registration and address. Most states have reasonable deadlines to request such ballots, including online. I favor requiring an excuse to request a ballot since we should encourage in-person voting. The 2005 Carter-Baker Commission recommended that.

One challenging question is whether organizations other than political parties should be able to send absentee ballot applications. At a minimum, applications should NOT include “pre-printed” information, such as your name, address, and other identifying information, and all should be returned only to local election officials. I say only political parties should send applications, but that’s a debate worth holding.

The US Postal Service is not supposed to forward absentee ballots to a “forwarding address.” It is supposed to be returned so voter rolls can be corrected. A mistake sometimes - often - happens anyway. Another error can be avoided by voting in person.

Require signed and dated mail ballots to arrive by election day

A scourge of our system is allowing mail ballots in many states to be received after election day so long as they are postmarked by election day. If my ballot must be cast with local officials by the end of Election Day, that should also apply to mail ballots.

One debate is whether the voter should sign and date the outside envelopes. I’m of two minds. Signature verification is a valuable tool but is highly subjective - voters’ signatures can change over time. Requiring the last four digits of a Social Security number may be the safest way to verify. A driver’s license or state identification number can also work, but that data is less safe and secure - those databases tend to be more public. Again, if you vote in person, early or otherwise, any problems can be resolved on the spot.

Another debate is when to start counting these ballots. As a Pennsylvania poll watcher in 2020, I was mystified why so many voters showing up in person on election day were being turned away because they had “already voted.” Mistakes or shenanigans can occur with absentee ballot requests or ballots being cast by others. That requires provisional ballots that are then investigated. Voting in person should trump voting by mail (that’s the law in many, if not most, jurisdictions). That means if a voter shows up to vote in person, any absentee ballot should be destroyed. That’s why I’m against early counting of mail ballots.

Speaking of counting mail ballots, they should be done at the precincts where the voters are registered to verify signatures and other information. They should NOT be sent to central warehouses to be mass machine-read far from the eyes of bipartisan poll watchers.

Paper ballots only

Lastly, we should vote by paper, using machines only to read votes detached from the internet. Precinct officials are trained to get a paper readout of the results to report to their superiors at the county level. In close elections requiring a recount, having a paper ballot is essential.

Concerned citizens need to rally their states to clean up their procedures where necessary to ensure that Americans can confidently accept election results. Most states seem to have figured it out, but a few have much work to do, including Arizona, Nevada, and California. Given the uniqueness of Alaska’s challenges, their slow counting can be excused to some degree (but their ranked-choice voting scheme is unfortunate).

And speaking of ranked-choice voting, if you really want a mess, try a “vote a home” ballot-by-mail system combined with a ranked-choice ballot and “ballot curing” schemes. State or local election systems will become the largest local government agencies to handle the confusion and errors that are sure to exist. Do NOT let your state legislators and governors institute “ranked choice” voting for general elections. There’s an excellent case to be made for them in party primaries, but that should be their choice (like Virginia - it’s how Glenn Youngkin was chosen as our nominee in 2021).

These are just a few of the reforms worth considering; there are others. Our elections are headed in the wrong direction. Our policy objectives should be simple: easy to vote, hard to cheat, efficient to count, and results within 24 hours, if not sooner. Most states can do it. Make sure yours does, and don’t let activists ruin it.