California Republican Party Admits It Placed
Misleading Ballot Boxes Around State
Government
officials say the receptacles are illegal and could lead to voter fraud, but
the party says it will continue the practice.
By Glenn
Thrush and Jennifer
Medina
- Oct. 12, 2020
The California Republican Party has
admitted responsibility for placing more than 50 deceptively labeled “official”
drop boxes for mail-in ballots in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange Counties — an
action that state officials said was illegal and could lead to voter fraud.
The dark gray metal boxes have been
popping up over the past two weeks near churches, gun shops and Republican
Party offices, mostly in conservative areas of a deep-blue state, affixed with
a white paper label identifying them as either an “Official Ballot Drop off
Box” or a “Ballot Drop Box.”
To the average voter, they are virtually
indistinguishable from drop-off sites sanctioned by the state, which are
governed by strict regulations intended to prevent the partisan manipulation of
ballots.
The actions of the
largely marginalized state party come at a moment when Republicans and
Democrats are engaged in a bitter national struggle over voting rights, with
President Trump’s allies accusing Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere of
undermining the integrity of the electoral process by expanding absentee voting
and other measures to increase ballot access.
On Monday, California’s secretary of
state, Alex Padilla, and Attorney General Xavier Becerra sent a
cease-and-desist order to the state- and county-level Republican parties,
ordering them to remove the boxes. They also urged voters who might have
unknowingly dropped off their ballots in the receptacles to sign up with the
state’s voter tracking website to ensure their vote is counted.
“Misleading voters is wrong regardless
of who is doing it,” Mr. Padilla said in a conference call with reporters,
adding that the boxes “are not permitted by state law.”
Mr. Becerra called the boxes “fake,”
adding that it was “illegal to tamper with a citizen’s vote.” He warned that
anyone “engaging in this activity” could be subject to criminal prosecution or
civil action.
Hector Barajas, a spokesman for the
California Republican Party, said the party would continue to distribute the
boxes, without adding any label identifying them explicitly as Republican
ballot drops.
Mr. Barajas — who
disclosed that Republicans were responsible for the boxes only after being
bombarded by questions by reporters on Monday — said the party’s actions were
legal because state law did not restrict “ballot harvesting,” a practice that
allows a third party to collect voters’ completed ballots.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have
decried the practice as corrupt when Democrats have been accused of collecting
bundles of ballots, which is legal in 26 states but subject to verification
requirements.
“There is nothing in any of the laws or
regulations cited in that advisory that indicate private organization drop
boxes are not permitted,” said Mr. Barajas, who blamed Democrats for blocking
anti-harvesting legislation.
“The way Democrats wrote the law, if we
wanted to use a Santa bag, we could,” he said. “A locked heavy box seems a lot
safer,” Mr. Barajas said.
Mr. Padilla dismissed that claim,
telling reporters that the boxes were not covered by legal protections, because
they were intended to “mislead voters and erode the public trust.”
State officials have not alleged that
operatives from either party have engaged in the selective harvesting of ballots
placed in the illegal boxes. The ballots will be counted if they are received,
even if they do not have a third-party signature typically required for
collected mail-in votes, Mr. Padilla said.
Republican officials purchased about
100 of the boxes in recent weeks in an attempt to boost turnout, especially in
competitive down-ballot races, as party leaders fret about Mr. Trump’s drag on
other Republicans, an operative with direct knowledge of the effort said.
They had installed
about half of them by the time Mr. Padilla and other state officials took
notice over the weekend.
State officials quickly ordered an
investigation into the boxes, and Mr. Padilla sent a memo to county elections
officials urging them to investigate the unauthorized boxes in order to
“guarantee the security and chain of custody of vote-by-mail” ballots placed in
them.
In his memo, he reminded local
officials that creating an illegal polling site was a felony punishable by up
to four years in prison.
Mr. Padilla’s office received a report
on Saturday that a metal box with a misleading sign suggesting that it was an
official site to drop off mail-in ballots had been placed in front of the Freedom’s
Way Baptist Church in Castaic, northwest of Los Angeles.
And last week, a supporter of a
Republican congressional candidate in Orange County, Michelle Steel, posted a
picture of himself on Twitter dropping off a ballot at one of the party’s
boxes.
In the post, Jordan Tygh, a regional
field director for the California Republican Party, flashes a thumbs-up over
the caption, “Doing my part and voting early,” according to The Orange County Register, which first
reported on the use of the boxes.
The post has since
been deleted.
