Congressman: 'Ballot harvesting’ and mailing out ‘live ballots’ are an opportunity for fraud

Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis, ranking member of the House Administration Committee, warned that "ballot harvesting" coupled with the automatic mailing of ballots in states like Nevada is "rife with fraud" and could cause major issues in the November election.

States such as Nevada and California have decided to automatically mail ballots to voters for the November election rather than require them to send a request first.

"What I'm reading about Nevada concerns me greatly," Davis said during a conference call on Wednesday with Illinois election officials. "I have been reading that somebody can return five ballots in one envelope without signatures. That's something that is rife for fraud. Look, political operatives should not determine how ballots get to and from a voter to a polling place."

Davis said ballot harvesting "corrupted" North Carolina's Ninth District race in 2018.

"We didn't seat that duly elected member of Congress, and we had a special election that elected someone else, and because of that I am very adamantly opposed to political operatives using a process, called ballot harvesting, to go and get live ballots that may have been mailed to every voter in a jurisdiction and hopefully return them to the polling place."

"It's a process that has already been rife with fraud," Davis added. "It's one that, unfortunately, if that individual who's likely going to go to jail in North Carolina because it's illegal there, if he would have done that in California, nobody would have batted an eye because it's legal."

In June, the Democratic National Committee unveiled a tool that helps campaigns locate inactive voters who have been purged from voter files by election officials in battleground states.

Davis warned that Democratic Party operatives and activists are advocating that voter rolls in certain states not be updated. States like Nevada rely on the information in their voter files to send out ballots.

"Many jurisdictions have been discouraged by Democrats in Washington from cleaning their voter rolls, and doing voter roll updates," he said. "I have sat through hearings with many of my Democratic colleagues, who have chastised election officials in states like Ohio, for doing what the law requires them to do to update their voter rolls.

"That's something that if you mail live ballots out to individuals who are not supposed to be registered to vote at that residence, it creates an opportunity for people to commit fraud. And we've seen it in Paterson, New Jersey in their most recent primary. We saw it in Evansville, Indiana in the most recent primary. So there are instances of people breaking the law when it comes to mailing live ballots."

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose described the task of maintaining the voter registration records in the state as challenging during a discussion on voting by mail in May.

"It's a dynamic database that's constantly changing by the second — people are turning 18, passing away, moving into the state and moving out of the state, that kind of thing," LaRose said. "I don't maintain a statewide voter registration database. I wish we could. We have to compile that from each of the county boards of elections, where 88 counties maintain theirs and I aggregate those up into one statewide database."

As Just the News recently reported, a third-party organization was automatically mailing out inaccurate absentee ballot applications throughout Virginia, including to deceased people and the wrong addresses.