Illegal Ballot Harvesting a Looming Issue in Arizona

1. We live in an age of early voting and ballot harvesting and if Republicans truly care about constitutional self-government and about maintaining confidence in the elections upon which our system depends  not to mention winning those elections -- they need to take action.
2. The pervasiveness of this phenomena raised alarms among Republicans, who wound up on the losing end of all the races that swung from one party to the other between election night and the final certified count that came a week or more later.
3. Of particular concern was the race for secretary of state in which Republican Steve Gaynor, who had promised to focus on election integrity, was ahead by 40,000 votes on election night only to lose by 20,252 votes when the final count was certified.
4. The situation in North Carolina, where Republican Mark Harris election has been called into question over ballot harvesting, demonstrates not only the peril, but that this should be a bipartisan issue.
5. When Republicans talk about election integrity, Democrats and their media allies immediately yell racism and voter suppression. These strong-arm tactics seem to be working: Republicans have largely been cowed into silence.
6. The other problem is that with millions of ballots unsecured out in the wild, so to speak  for weeks in advance of the election, there is significant opportunity for tampering.
7. PHOENIX Republican candidate Martha McSally beat Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in last year's election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat.
8. Think of him as Arizona's version of Brenda Snipes, the Broward County supervisor of elections who was forced to resign in disgrace after Florida's results were nearly thrown into chaos after the last election.
9. Yet, the Arizona Republican Party took no substantial action -- to the consternation of Republican voters who continue to have unanswered questions about the legitimacy of the certified results.
10. How could this happen? Was it legitimate or is there a real reason for concern over the integrity of the election? Contributing to the suspicion is not only the lead changes, but the substantial amount of time between Election Day and the certification of the vote.
11. The actions of Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Flores during the ballot count were seen by many observers, including the Arizona Republican Party, as suspect.
12. Ballot harvesting creates the opportunity and the incentive for the activists involved to intimidate voters, steal, alter, and even destroy ballots.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/22/illegal_ballot_harvesting_a_looming_issue_in_arizona_.html