Big ballot-harvesting operation busted in Orlando, Florida

Ballot harvesting, according to the California Democrats who'd like to take it national, is an innocent practice where union members and activists, some of them illegally present in the country, do voters the favor, see, of helping voters fill out their ballots and then collecting those ballots for them so that they need never go to the polls. They call it "a new service." It's part of their "make every vote count" agenda, and who could be against that?

But out in Florida, where there's still some semblance of objectivity, investigators found another story.

According to the Washington Times:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security is requesting a criminal investigation into charges of ballot harvesting in Orlando, a Democratic stronghold in the critical swing state.

Cynthia Harris, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for District 6 commissioner in Orange County, which includes Orlando, provided a sworn complaint to the election crimes office, alleging left-leaning organizations have been perpetrating a scheme to encourage residents in black neighborhoods to apply for mail-in ballots and to fill out those ballots, which she said have been collected by paid canvassers, and sometimes altered, all in violation of state law.

In an interview with The Washington Times, Ms. Harris said she has video evidence of paid ballot harvesters operating in Orlando neighborhoods in both 2014 and 2017, and that the scheme has been going on for decades, continuing through the 2020 election and the 2022 primary.

The incident had every nightmare scenario that could happen with a ballot-harvesting operation run by leftist operatives. 

According to Just The News:

“Ballot brokers typically work up to a year in advance,” [the whistleblower] stated. “Ballot brokers visit individuals in their residences and assists the individual with filling out a request for a mail-in ballot. After the mail-in ballot arrives, the voter is instructed to wait for the ballot broker returns to the individuals residence. They are asked to not seal the certificate envelope.”

“In rare circumstances, if the voter has filled out the ballot and sealed the envelope certificate, the ballot broker will take the ballot and then steam open the sealed envelope,” the affidavit added. “The ballot broker will either correct any votes, if necessary, that were not voted according to their wishes or just throw them out.”

So this has been going on for years in the Orlando area and, up until now, nobody did anything about it. It's coercive, illegal, anti-democratic, widespread, and slimy.

According to a 2020 GOP congressional investigation of ballot harvesting, the kinds of problems this largely illegal (outside California) practice, which is growing, is all about this kind of activity:

The unlimited ballot harvesting process in use throughout California should be differentiated from what is known as absentee or mail-in voting in other states. Absentee and mail-in voting began as a means for a resident of a state, who would be absent on Election Day or who could not physically cast a ballot at a polling location, to cast their vote ahead of time – with some states requiring an “excuse” to qualify.5 This is a reasonable means to increase voter participation, unfortunately California has removed any means by which to reasonably supervise this process - leading to what we now know as ballot harvesting.

This also gave rise to paid political operatives, known as “ballot brokers,” recruiting and pressuring voters to vote by mail.

These ballot brokers identify specific locations, such as large apartment complexes or nursing homes, where voters have traditionally voted for their party and build relationships with the residents. Operatives encourage, and even assist, these unsuspecting voters in requesting a mailin ballot; weeks later when the ballot arrives in the mail the same ballot brokers are there to assist the voter in filling out and delivering their ballot. This behavior can result in undue influence in the voting process and destroys the secret ballot, a long-held essential principle of American elections intended to protect voters.

These very scenarios are what anti-electioneering laws at polling locations are meant to protect against.6 A voter cannot wear a campaign button to a polling location, but a political operative can collect your ballot in your living room? Furthermore, it has been reported that these ballot brokers intercept and destroy mail-in ballots of voters who traditionally vote against the brokers’ preferred party.

7 These ballot brokers are the new Tammany Hall ward bosses, controlling the votes of their harvested area. Brokers are often added to campaign payrolls based purely on the number of ballots they promise to harvest

Coercive operatives with money on their minds thug up to people's doorsteps and make them fill out ballots to their liking, or the ballots get thrown away, and you can bet the voters go on some sort of list. If they hand over their ballots, they can get their votes changed, they can get them discarded, they can get silenced and intimidated into voting the political operatives' way or else. One wonders how many Republicans would have won in that Disney-happy area had there not been this ballot-harvesting operation going on with nobody saying anything. How many bad laws since passed would not have seen the light of day if the elections didn't have this kind of cheating? Would Rep. Val Demings of Orlando, a leftist Democrat, really be in office if the ballot harvesters were not so active in her district? Would the looney leftist Rep. Frederica Wilson be similarly ensconced if the same thing were going on in hers, further to the south? Here's a list of Florida's Democrats.

It definitely raises questions. As Neo of the Neo blog noted (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit):

Of course, this Florida news should get big national coverage, but that certainly doesn’t appear to be happening at the moment, and I wouldn’t suggest sitting on a hot stove till it does.

Perhaps because there are cases of this all over now, not just legal ballot-harvesting, but nakedly illegal and bustable ballot harvesting, as if these vote thieves are perfectly confident that nothing will ever happen to them, not with Democrats alone benefiting and the mainstream media covering for them, constantly yawping about the "most secure elections ever."

No, these elections are full of holes and becoming a laughingstock to the third world, which knows all these tricks well. Ballot harvesting, for example, was pioneered by the PRI party in Mexico, which held power for 70 years as a one-party state, having maneuvered itself into this position precisely with this practice. It was not for nothing that writer Mario Vargas Llosa called this setup "the perfect dictatorship." Democrats, many of them with roots in the Mexican illegal alien community in California, brought this practice with them and adapted it to California's elections -- the point that real Mexican nationals are appalled. One told me that California's politics resemble Mexico's 40 years ago, Mexico having instituted more safeguards to prevent this rigging from happening.

What's scary here is that it's all over.

Ballot harvesting was busted in Arizona last summer, where a "sophisticated operation" was run in a southern border city to elect Democrats and two operatives got tried and jailed. A Democrat political operative was busted last year for running a ballot-harvesting operation in San Antonio. A case in Georgia in 2020 was referred for prosecution and then dismissed, and then like uncrushed campfire embers, another one flared up recently. In Minnesota, Project Veritas caught a ballot harvester admit for the cameras about his dirty deeds, done on behalf of Rep. Ilhan Omar. Once again, everything was dismissed as nothing, but one wonders about the legitimacy of Omar's election as such cases keep cropping up. It doesn't seem logical that anyone would want to vote for someone that anti-American, and steeped in the values of fourth-world elites, but somehow, they do.

Joe Biden, who's in office by fraud, is constantly comparing the U.S. to the rest of the world on the economy and telling Americans they don't know how good they have it compared to other countries with him at the helm. 

Perhaps he can compare and contrast that to the fact that ballot harvesting is illegal in virtually every country in the world and certainly those that have clean and fair elections. We see it going on in California now, where it is legal, and we see it going on now in Florida where it isn't. This is so problematic it calls for a Constitutional amendment to ban the practice, and fund a well-equipped investigative team with enforcement teeth so that America can actually have clean and fair elections. 

Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis is to be praised for taking the matter seriously and catching these miscreants. In the absence of a Constitutional amendment, one can only hope that other governors follow.

Big ballot-havesting operation busted in Orlando, Florida - American Thinker