(PresidentialWire.com)- A Michigan court voted this month to support ballot harvesting in the state, opening up the November 3 election to possible fraud. The court ruled that the deadline for postmarked mail-in ballots would be extended, allowing them to be received some 14 days after the election day. It means that the election results are not likely to be known on November 3, leading to weeks of uncertainty and the possibility of fraud.
Ballot harvesting in Michigan will mean that strangers will be able to visit the homes of people who have not voted and ask them if they have their mail-in ballot. They will legally be able to offer to take that ballot to the voting station, which presents the possibility that bad-faith actors will take the ballots and dispose of them if they believe it is a vote for the party they don’t like.
Ballot harvesting is normally a felony for this exact reason.
Judge Cynthia Stephens ruled that all mail-in ballots that are postmarked by November 2, the day before election day, will still be counted.
In her ruling, Stephens said that people will only be able to drop off ballots belonging to other people between the Friday before the election and the close of polls on November 3.
The number of ballots that may be returned by one person by other people had not been limited, meaning that Democrat campaigns may ultimately send out campaigners to areas that support them more but which may not have turned out to vote. It could result in a massive push from Democrats (or Republicans, but Democrats have used ballot harvesting more than Republicans in the past) to get people to vote even when they have not been sufficiently won over by the Democratic candidate.
Judge Stephens dismissed the idea that ballot harvesting could result in fraud, saying there was “little evidence that fraud would increase with a larger pool of persons eligible to assist absentee voters.” The evidence, however, shows that Democrats previously used ballot harvesting to collect hundreds of thousands of ballots in 2018 to flip seven Republican seats.
It could happen again…and this time, the presidency is at risk.
