Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats are trying to jam through ballot harvesting for 2020 because they know they can “weaponize the process” like they did in the 2018 congressional elections.
Ballot harvesting is the practice of allowing political operatives and others to collect voters’ ballots and turn them in en masse to polling stations. Some states have enacted restrictions on the practice, while others have allowed it. In 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB1921, which legalized ballot harvesting.
“I was in Congress at the time and I saw some of my best friends have election leads on the night of election night and one of them, David Valadao, was up by 6 points,” Davis said Monday during an appearance on Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.”
“Three weeks later because of harvested ballots that came in overwhelmingly for Democrats, he was defeated. This is a process that has been corrupted. Even Republicans corrupted the process in North Carolina, in a state that it’s illegal, and we did not seat the member of Congress who that Republican operative worked for.”
Valadao, a Republican running for re-election in California’s 21st Congressional District, was up by nearly 5,000 votes over TJ Cox on the night of Nov. 7. One month and 43,000 outstanding ballots later, Cox was declared the winner by just 862 votes.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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