House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently held up Congress’s COVID-19 response because she wanted to whittle down our voting choices to mail-only ballot elections. Thankfully, her efforts were thwarted.
Pelosi represents Californians. And if she had her way, she would impose California’s dangerous election laws on all people, even though there are huge concerns with California’s policies. We’ve seen them fail, leave elections vulnerable to fraud, and harm our American system of federalism. I’ve got a message for her: Don’t California our other states.
A troubling part of Pelosi’s proposal requires states to vote by mail. This would have required the mailing of absentee ballots to everyone, early voting, ballot harvesting, same-day voter registration, and online voter registration. These policies don’t address today’s outsized cybersecurity threats to American elections. Instead, Democrats such as Pelosi wanted to walk the road to ruin.
The state of California has more than 20.6 million registered voters from 58 counties. California allows the above election policies since its 2016 Voter’s Choice Act.
Among other things, it allowed voters to cast ballots at any polling place in their county — a huge, new cost for the state with the largest voting population in the country. Los Angeles County had to receive an exemption. LA County found that mailing 4.3 million ballots — that’s how many voters it has — is terribly expensive. Instead, LA County implemented its own, reduced version of the Voter’s Choice Act, which lets voters cast a ballot in any of the county’s 1,000 voting centers over 11 days instead of on one Election Day.
California’s officials found problems with this LA County policy. Just a month before the presidential preference primary election, California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla identified a variety of security flaws and other issues associated with it. A simple malware attack could potentially alter votes. Padilla gave the county until August 2020 to resolve some of its flaws — there is still no fix, yet Democrats were prepared to saddle the entire country with this broken system.
Polling places also found problems with these policies when California tried them during its March 3 primary. California polls were overcrowded with new voters and registered independents who didn’t realize they had to request a mail-in Democratic ballot formally. One-quarter of all California counties experienced problems trying to connect to online voter databases with the tablets provided by the state. The devices timed out, such that many voters had to wait hours to cast their ballots. If this was just a dry run of the state’s new system, can you imagine how terrible the frenzy will be when the presidential election comes this November?
Another concern with Pelosi’s proposal is ballot harvesting — otherwise known as the collection and submitting of ballots by third parties. In 2016, California legalized ballot harvesting in statute. In 2005, the Commission on Federal Elections Reform reported that ballot harvesting was a growing problem. The issues it raised make sense. The report stated that “third-party organizations, candidates, and political party activists” collecting absentee ballots pose a risk to the integrity of elections.
The report found still further risks in the event that “blank ballots [are] mailed to the wrong address” or to “large residential buildings getting intercepted.” “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church [are] more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation,” it found.
This recipe leads to abuse, especially when you consider that not all ballots received before Election Day are kept secure. The potential for ballot manipulation by third parties is extremely high.
Those pushing for mail-only ballots and other election policies similar to California’s put our American system of federalism at risk. Each state should figure out how best to handle its elections. There shouldn’t be a national directive. We as Americans thrive on choices, and elections are something left to the states based on the Constitution. Federalism is based on choices — it lets states make certain choices independent of other states.
Pelosi’s effort to nationalize California election law threatens our republic. She and others supporting such policies ignore their demonstrated failings in California. In their ignorance, they would open our elections to more vulnerability and fraud while dismantling our federalist system, under which states are constitutionally charged to manage elections.
Instead of following California’s failure, we should focus on the legitimacy of our elections. It’s time to press pause — don’t listen to those promoting failed policies, and don’t California my USA.
Arizona state Rep. Shawnna Bolick is vice chair of the Ways and Means Committee and a member of both the Elections Committee and the Federal Relations Committee. Follow her on Twitter @Bolick4AZ.
