IN-DEPTH: GOP Embraces Ballot Harvesting, but Some Republicans Have Misgivings

'You don't want to be at a political disadvantage,' conservative strategist says

A person delivers an absentee ballot to a ballot drop box in Louisville, Ky., on Oct. 13, 2020. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

As the 2024 election cycle draws near, it appears that Republicans are recognizing ballot harvesting as an integral part of any successful election strategy.

However, opinions on the decision to give in and use ballot harvesting are mixed.

While campaigns are already well underway, the much anticipated 2024 presidential election cycle won’t officially begin until the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 22, 2024. But while Super Tuesday is only tentatively scheduled to take place on March 5 of next year, debates on the pros and cons of ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots have already begun.

Republicans have spent years decrying the practice of mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting, but they are now realizing that, in order to win, they have to play.

Ballot harvesting is a process by which third-parties can collect completed mail-in ballots from voters and deliver them in bulk to a drop box or local elections office.

Although every state allows absentee voting, the rules and guidelines vary greatly between states.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 31 states allow voters to authorize someone else to return their ballot on their behalf. Of those, nine limit the number of ballots an authorized person can return, and four limit the amount of time those ballots can remain in the authorized person’s custody before being returned.

Alabama has a law on the books that prohibits anyone except the voter from returning his or her ballot, and in Mississippi, several civil rights organizations are suing over a recent state law that would ban ballot harvesting.

Data compiled by USA Facts in 2021 show that three states—Florida, Georgia, and Iowa—decreased the number of ballot drop boxes allowed per county and established regulations requiring drop boxes to be constantly monitored by county election officials. Conversely, Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia passed laws that increased the number of drop box locations.

On Jan. 4, 2021, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) introduced H.R. 1. The measure, labeled by Democrats as the “For the People Act,” would have prohibited states from banning ballot harvesting. While it did pass the then-Democrat-controlled House, a Republican filibuster killed the measure. Sarbanes made a similar effort in 2019. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the measure from reaching the Senate floor.

Conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D'Souza speaks during the final day of the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference on May 31, 2014 in New Orleans. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Twelve states limit the number of ballots a third party may return on behalf of other voters.

In 2022, Dinesh D’Souza released a documentary called “2000 Mules,” alleging that 2,000 individuals were hired by unknown nonprofits to collect ballots illegally and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

By the Numbers

To understand the power of ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots in an election, one must look at the numbers.

A November 2020 study released by Pew Research showed that 54 percent of voters cast their ballots in person during the November 2020 presidential election, compared with 46 percent who voted by mail-in or absentee ballot. Only 27 percent said they voted in person on Election Day, and an equal amount said they voted by way of in-person early voting.

While 37 percent of former President Donald Trump’s voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day, only 17 percent of Biden voters did the same.

Where 30 percent of Trump supporters voted early, only 24 percent of Biden’s voters cast ballots in person before Election Day.

Most noteworthy, while 32 percent of Trump supporters voted by way of mail-in or absentee ballot, more than half of Biden’s voters, 58 percent, cast their ballots through the mail-in method.

Polling data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in April 2021 showed that 69 percent of voters in the 2020 presidential election voted by mail or early voting, making it the “highest rate of nontraditional voting for a presidential election” recorded.

In 2016, for comparison, 40 percent of Americans used mail-in ballots during the presidential election.

‘A Huge Mistake’

After years of criticizing ballot harvesting and a push toward mail-in ballots, some Republicans are beginning to reconsider their party’s unbending resistance to both practices.

On Nov. 29, 2022, on Truth Social, Trump wrote in all capital letters, “You can never have fair & free elections with mail-in ballots—never, never, never. Won’t and can’t happen!!!”

Three months later, in a February fundraising email, Trump asked supporters to chip in for his “ballot harvesting fund,” writing, “Either we ballot harvest where we can, or you can say goodbye to America!”

President Donald Trump (L) is greeted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at Southwest Florida International Airport on Oct. 16, 2020. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

On May 6, 2021, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed SB 90 into law, effectively banning ballot harvesting in the state. At a Nov. 3, 2021, press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, DeSantis said he wanted to make ballot harvesting a third-degree felony.

However, as a contender for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election cycle, DeSantis assured a voter at a campaign stop in Iowa on June 1, “We’re going to do ballot harvesting.”

“I’m doing it. Yes,” he said. “I’m not going to fight with one hand tied behind my back.”

During a September 2020 interview with C-SPAN, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel criticized hasty expansions of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting under the guise of public safety during the COVID-19 pandemic without first putting a system in place to ensure the integrity of the process.

She said Trump was right in saying “Democrats have inserted havoc and chaos” into the election cycle.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel speaks during a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington on Nov. 9, 2020. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

In a Fox News interview two years later, McDaniel said Republican voters need to start voting early.

“I have said this over and over again,“ she said. ”There were many in 2020 saying, ‘Don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early.’ And we have to stop that.”

In June, McDaniel started the GOP’s new “Bank Your Vote” initiative. In a video promoting the project, McDaniel stressed that the GOP is going to join in the ballot harvesting practice only as a means to “protect the vote,” and because it’s necessary for Republicans to adopt similar strategies since Democrats have already established a successful advantage.

On June 20, Talking Points Memo reported that when Mike Lindell discussed the topic of ballot harvesting with McDaniel, he told her, “That’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”

Her response, he said, was that the RNC has to “do everything we can to win.”

Lindell told The Epoch Times that he didn’t want to argue with McDaniel, but he said the RNC has made a huge mistake.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, here speaking Nov. 15, 2022, at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., challenged incumbent Ronna McDaniel in January’s election for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, claiming there is widespread discontent with the party’s leadership, especially among America First voters. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“How do you just change your tune and hope states will go for it and make ballot harvesting legal?” Lindell said. “This is not the right approach. It’s a desperation move.”

Lindell also noted how Democrats put several voting practices into play illegally in multiple states during the COVID-19 pandemic through secretaries of state and governors, which he believes gave Democrats an illegal advantage.

“No matter what is going on in our country, you have to stick by the Constitution, and legislators make the law,” Lindell said. “So all of these things they put in illegally in 2020, they are now starting to try to make as the status quo, and that can’t happen or we’re going to lose our country for sure.”

‘It’s a Bad Idea’

Michael Thompson, chairman of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee and Election Integrity Committee member of the Republican Party of Florida, said that the words “ballot harvesting” “strike fear into many Republicans.”

Michael Thompson, chairman of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee. (Courtesy of Michael Thompson)

“They should just stay in their lane,” Thompson told The Epoch Times. “The one thing Republicans never seem to learn is that Democrats are constantly doing things to set them up.”

Thompson said he believes Republicans are embracing ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots only “because Democrats have been so successful at it.”

“But my concern is that Democrats are going to be in there monitoring Republicans to make sure they’re doing it right and if they aren’t doing it right they’re going to accuse Republicans of trying to rig the elections,” he said. “No matter what you think of Democrats, they’ve always out-maneuvered Republicans.

“It’s too little, too late. It’s a bad idea to jump into ballot harvesting to try to win an election when your opponent wrote the book on it.”

‘We Have to Compete’

Corey Gibson said he’s excited by the idea of leveling the ballot harvest playing field. In his position as national executive director of development for Rethink! GOP, he will be playing an integral role in creating what he said will be a winning strategy.

“Ballot harvesting is something that Democrats have been doing forever and the Republicans simply haven’t been competing with them,” Gibson told The Epoch Times, explaining that the project began when “some Gen Z folks got together” and began discussing how exhausting it was watching the GOP continue to lose the ballot harvest game.

Corey Gibson, national executive director of development for RethinkGOP.org. (Courtesy of Corey Gibson)

As founder of the America First PACT, Gibson has already assembled a skilled “army of social media influencers” he can “loop in to help create the initiative.”

“We’re the first national ballot harvesting project,” Gibson said.

“We’ve been able to unite Gen Z leadership with ‘established,’ rather than ‘establishment,’ leaders and champions for voter integrity. Now, like with everything else in life, it’s a matter of fundraising.”

While some are concerned about the optics of Republicans’ embracing a practice they were condemning not long ago, Gibson said he has come in contact with many who are relieved that the party is finally competing with Democrats in this way.

“By and large, everybody hates ballot harvesting,” he said. “But they also hate the fact that it’s legal and we’re not doing it and we’re continuing to lose. It’s here. We have to compete to win elections.”

‘Vote Trafficking’

In an October 2019 study for The Heritage Foundation (pdf), Hans von Spakovsky described ballot harvesting as “a dangerous and foolish public policy that threatens the integrity of elections,” insisting “it should not be implemented by state legislatures—and should be prohibited in the states that currently allow it.”

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of The Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative. (Courtesy of Hans von Spakovsky)

As manager of the organization’s Election Law Reform Initiative, von Spakovsky is an authority on voter fraud and the enforcement of federal voting rights laws.

“I actually call it ‘vote trafficking,’ because that’s what it is,” von Spakovsky told The Epoch Times.

Still, he doesn’t “see any conflict” between prior and current GOP sentiments on the topic.

“In states where it’s legal you need to comply and play by the rules,” von Spakovsky explained. “But you don’t want to be at a political disadvantage because the other party is heavily recruiting people to go out and collect ballots and you don’t do the same thing. You have to meet their efforts.”

For those who express concern about Republicans’ decision to embrace ballot harvesting and the prospect that the GOP won’t be able to compete with Democrats on this contentious yet necessary front, von Spakovsky said: “That’s no reason not to take legal advantage of the rules that govern an election process.

“You have to meet their efforts and do the same thing. But that doesn’t mean that you stop trying to convince legislators in states that allow this to change the law.”

Time to Go Back

Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk show host, author, and founder of PragerU, issued a statement to The Epoch Times about the issue.

“Democrats have pushed through election rule changes that transformed Election Day into Election Month, pushed through rule changes that, in some states, made ballot harvesting—a practice that had been illegal precisely because it so opens the door to fraud—legal, and then added a further rule change requiring mail-in ballots be sent to every registered voter,” he said.

Prager also suggested that Democrats didn’t change the rules out of concern for voters who might not have time to go to their polling location to cast their vote.

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU and conservative radio talk show host and writer speaks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Oct. 11, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

“They did these things because they knew if elections became a game of gathering ballots rather than winning votes, Democrats, through their activists operating primarily in Democrat-leaning precincts, would have a massive advantage,” Prager said.

“Anyone can collect and turn in the ballots of others with no verified chain of custody or proof that the voter, not an activist, filled out the ballot.”

For now, Prager conceded that “Republicans will have to play this game by the new rules and also organize and ‘harvest’ ballots.”

Prager suggested that if the GOP truly wants to restore election integrity, Republican state legislators will have to propose and pass laws that bring elections back to the days of paper ballots and hand-counts at the precinct level—on Election Day.

“The only exceptions should be made for people who are bedridden or out of town when the election takes place,” Prager said. “Anything short of that means the United States no longer has elections we can have faith in.”

Joe Gomez, Janice Hisle, and Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.