Earlier this week, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell spoke about the North Carolina Board of Election’s vote to hold a new election in the 9th Congressional District because absentee mail ballots were illegally harvested. McConnell spoke about that decision and the issue of ballot harvesting overall….
Ballot collection, or harvesting, benefits people who are far from mailboxes or who have mobility issues, said Rick Hasen of the University of California Irvine. But he said the tradeoff is a greater chance of fraud, such as ballots being stolen.
“If all we were concerned about was eliminating the potential risk of fraud, then we would get rid of not only laws that allow people to collect absentee ballots,” Hasen said. “Then we would get rid of all absentee balloting as a whole.”