I think it will depend on how many ballots are involved.
Likely scenario:
The BOE will contact as many as they can to have them come rectify the chain-of-custody issue. The remainder will be set aside until after the election. If the election is won by a margin too significant to be affected by counting those remaining ballots, it won’t matter. If the remaining ballots are statistically significant, then I’m sure further efforts will be made to allow those voters to rectify the problems created by the GOP.
Few elections are won by a margin too significant to be affected by counting those remaining ballots- as there are local elections and state propositions.
No doubt CA is deep, dark blue, and Biden wins here, sure. But the rest is in doubt. Here in my district, the vote for congresscritter will be close.
Because the sad reality is that this isn’t newsworthy. Some Republicans are breaking the law; that’s a man bites dog story. Everyone knew the Republicans were going to break laws in this election. They’ve said it openly.
And this is how they break the law and get away with it. We’re talking about how “the Republicans” put out those illegal ballot boxes. But for a criminal case, we need to know which specific individuals were involved. Who came up with this plan? Who paid for these ballot boxes? Who decided where to place them? Who put them out on the street? Those individuals are the ones who could be arrested for committing crimes but we don’t know their names.
This is how a big criminal organization like the Mafia operates. You know the organization is committing crimes but you can’t arrest the organization. And it’s very hard to track down the specific individuals within the organization and determine which specific crimes they committed. And the Mafia doesn’t have the advantage of controlling the investigations into its criminal activities like the Republicans have.
It’s three weeks before the election. No investigation is going to be able to make arrests in that time period. And if the Republicans stay in power, they’ll be in a position to squash any investigation. So the voters need to decide if they want to let a criminal organization continue to run the country.
What makes you think the Republicans have confined their law breaking to just California? They’ve been caught in one state (maybe because it is a blue state) but I’m sure they are also breaking laws in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and North Carolina and Arizona.
Any of them. This isn’t about the presidential race. This was done, IMO, to create a perception of voter fraud committed by Democrats to boost the chances of the Republican candidate for the House race by moving the issue to the courts and having the election results invalidated.
As I said in another thread, I think the whole “but we thought it was allowable!” act is just a fig leaf for if they got caught.
I expect the BOE is going to be able to clear up the chain-of-custody issues for the majority of those ballots through mail, personal contact and/or the publicity surrounding the problem. In an election involving thousands, a couple hundred ballots that must be invalidated would probably not matter much. I say this as someone who recognizes that many races can be won/lost on the basis of very, very few votes.
And again, I’m suggesting a scenario based on experience as a low-level election worker for many years in California. Who knows what they may actually do? This is a brand-new situation – and one the BOE should not have to be called upon to remedy. I do hope the California GOP is punished for its actions. Disregarding chain-of-custody is a pretty big deal.
Yeah, but this is where this particular story is going on.
I did find it amusing, when I was voting yesterday, someone was holding a sign that said “Ballot Drop Off”, and she was standing next to a dumpster, with her sign pointing right at it.
I assume that it was meant to direct traffic to turn after the dumpster, but it still made me chuckle and wish my phone had a camera on it.
I agree, and that’s what’s annoying.
I’d much rather live in a universe where my first assumption was that this was just overenthusiastic and naïve people who thought it would be a good way to increase voter outreach.
The Republican party has not done much in the last few years for me to give them that benefit of the doubt, however.
I do wonder how many ballots were collected in this manner.
Is it 1, 100, or 10,000? Will we ever even know?
I also wonder if these boxes have already been emptied. If they have been up for a week or so, then they may have already had their ballots collected and taken to the official drop off location.
Indeed, the Republicans so frequently interfere with the democratic process, that they were until fairly recently under court supervision. Now, they’re back to their old tricks.
Every county’s rules in California can be a little different. I still have friends and family there, and I think ballots have barely gone out across the state.
Like you, I wonder how many ballots are involved. I expect we’ll learn more as the story unfolds. It’s early yet.
I can about guarantee that the GOP representatives who are acting all, “who, us?” are lying. Chain-of-custody is a well-known facet of handling ballots in California. It’s Election Integrity 101.
I also think those boxes may have been lightly used. Most people who return their ballots to a drop box use the same box again and again. Once you’ve sussed out a good spot, you tend to return. Plus the GOP boxes don’t look official in any way.
If they get away with vote fraud - they get away with it.
If they don’t, they have still sown the seeds of public perception of “vote fraud is something that happens” and that lends much more credence to the argument that vote fraud is a real problem, and fraud is NOT a rare thing. The fact that Republicans themselves are the ones perpetuating the fraud wouldn’t change the fact that public perception of elections is now tarnished.
It’s the Republican circle of life. They break laws to steal elections. They steal elections to have political power. They have political power so they can get away with breaking laws.
I don’t know that the “public” would have that perception.
Republicans, for sure. Their cognitive dissonance is such that they will say, “If we are doing it, so are they. If we can get away with it, so can they.”
Rational people will see this, and see that it is Republicans who are trying to get away with it. They will consider the validity of an election that a Republican won to be suspect, but not that of a Democratic victory.
Further, in seeing all these Republicans being caught attempting to commit fraud should increase the perception of the validity of the elections, in that they are not seeing people get away with it, but rather, get caught trying. It should give voters a reason to believe that trying to commit election fraud is hard to do and easy to detect (which it is, really).
So, I can see why Republicans think that this is a good strategy, and it will probably even work on a number of their followers. But I really don’t think that it will work out the way that they think it will. All it will do is tarnish the public perception of the Republicans, not of elections.
