A majority of registered voters, including 54 percent of low-income voters, oppose ballot harvesting via political operatives and paid organizers, a HEP and HEP Action memo revealed.
The Senate Rules Committee is holding a hearing on Wednesday on the House-passed “For the People Act,” which GOP critics say would essentially federalize U.S. elections by stripping states’ power to implement their own election integrity measures, such as voter ID.
Additionally, the act would essentially give the greenlight for ballot harvesting, requiring states to “permit a voter to designate any person to return a voted and sealed absentee ballot to the post office, a ballot drop-off location, tribally designated building, or election office so long as the person designated to return the ballot does not receive any form of compensation based on the number of ballots.”
States “may not put any limit on how many voted and sealed absentee ballots any designated person can return.”
Jason Snead, Executive Director of the Honest Elections Project, sent a memo to members of Congress and state legislators, showing the mass support for basic election integrity measures. That includes bans on ballot harvesting.
“Americans do not want political operatives harvesting and trafficking ballots,” the survey found, noting 11 percent of voters believe “vote trafficking should be legal.” The vast majority, or 62 percent, believe it should be “illegal for political operatives and paid organizers to have direct access to absentee voters as they vote, and then take unsupervised possession of their ballots.” Fifty-four percent of low-income voters hold the same sentiment:
H.R. 1 nevertheless forces every community in the nation to allow it. Progressives often tout vote trafficking as helping poor and minority voters, yet 54% of low-income voters and 66% of Hispanic voters think the practice should be illegal. Vote trafficking has been used to intimidate and disenfranchise voters, and several states have banned it. H.R. 1 expressly overrules these sensible and popular laws.
The finding is significant, as Democrats typically categorize basic election integrity measures, including bans on ballot harvesting, as discriminatory to disadvantaged Americans. But, according to the survey, registered voters across the board do not endorse the practice.
The survey, taken March 4-10 among 1,200 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/- 2.83 percent.
