LOS ANGELES – The California Republican Party has announced “smoking gun” evidence of statewide election fraud, the existence of which has been a cornerstone of GOP efforts to delegitimize the 2020 race.
The announcement came shortly after election officials caught the GOP placing more than 100 ballot-collection boxes around Southern California, preemptively committing the fraud they have been warning people about. Although it is legal in California to collect ballots for others — commonly called “ballot harvesting” because it sounds like something from a Stephen King novel about a spooky election — the process must be conducted person-to-person so a clear chain of custody can be established.
“This is exactly the kind of outright criminal activity that is destroying our electoral process,” California Republican Party spokesperson Hector Barajas said in a released statement. “You can’t tell me there’s nothing fishy about unofficial voting boxes labeled ‘official,’ distributed by Republicans, to gather ballots collected by Republicans, and delivered to a polling site by Republicans. This just shows you how rampant election fraud is. Which we know, because we’re the ones doing it.”
Similar instances of election fraud have been reported by state Republicans across the country, including Texas governor Greg Abbot limiting ballot boxes to one per county, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis mandating all voters run a gauntlet where they have to eat a dozen Chick-Fil-A nuggets and listen to Ted Nugent’s entire catalog before casting their vote.
“Sometimes suppressing votes just isn’t enough,” tweeted national GOP chair Ronna McDaniel in response to the controversy. “We need to think outside the ballot box, and show how illegitimate the election process is. And the best way to do that is to reveal how easily Democrats could rig this election. Which they didn’t. So we had to.”
Democrats have decried the activity as part of a nationwide effort by the GOP to rig the upcoming election by disenfranchising minority voters and vowed to immediately combat these activities before election day by forming an emergency committee to establish rules for a blue ribbon panel to present a mandate for a subcommittee to look at the polls and determine the feasibility of potentially considering convening a board of inquiry.
