As we head into the 2022 midterms, concerns about election integrity remain at an all-time high for voters. And after a Yuma County, Arizona woman recently pled guilty to organizing a ballot trafficking operation in 2020, it's no surprise that concerns about ballot trafficking rank highest. An op-ed by the Honest Elections Project's Jason Snead explains:
One common tactic for committing fraud is known as ballot trafficking or harvesting. Organizers and activists go door-to-door to “help” voters cast their ballots and then collect them, all without any official supervision. Proponents defend the practice as aiding vulnerable voters. In practice, though, vote trafficking often turns these voters into victims.
He continued:
In Kentucky, a mayor running for reelection conspired with family members to bribe, coerce, and intimidate absentee voters, specifically targeting poor and disabled people. The object: to compel them to cast their mail ballots for the mayor while the conspirators watched.
Vote trafficking often targets group homes. In Texas, a social worker at a State Supported Living Center was recently charged with 134 felony counts for attempting to register 67 of the facility’s residents. None had given their consent, and many had been legally judged mentally incapacitated.
Recent polling by Honest Elections shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to ballot trafficking.
Vote trafficking exposes voters to coercion and intimidation and is a vehicle for fraud. Only 14% of voters think organized vote trafficking should be legal, compared to 61% who think it should be illegal. 58% of low-income voters, 75% of voters 65+, and 57% of Hispanics think trafficking should be illegal—all groups that the liberal activists claim want and need vote trafficking.
Ballot trafficking severely undermines the integrity of elections. Those on the Left continue to downplay the dangers of ballot harvesting, even after an Arizona woman pled guilty earlier this month to organizing a ballot trafficking operation in the 2020 election.
Investigators said it appears she used her position as a powerful figure in the heavily Mexican American community to get people to give her or others their ballots to return to the polls...
"It’s all about corruption in San Luis and skewing a city council election," Yuma Republican Rep. Tim Dunn said. "This has been going on for a long time, that you can’t have free and fair elections in south county, for decades. And its spreading across the country."
UPDATE from the AP about a San Luis woman arrested in 2020 for ballot harvesting during the primaries. “The alleged illegal ballot collection… happened in plain sight outside a cultural center… on the day of the primary election.”https://t.co/dkAeOC9o58
— JOE DANA (@JoeDanaReports) June 2, 2022
Americans want it to be easy to vote and harder to cheat. States with bans on ballot trafficking are taking a step in the right direction to achieve this important goal.