AZ GOP teaches volunteers to scope out "ballot harvesting" this election season

[Coyotl]

Yet another voter suppression law and tactic by Republicans:

State GOP teaches volunteers to scope out "ballot harvesting" this election season
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX -- The state Republican Party is training volunteers to look for and document illegal "ballot harvesting'' after county election officials said they won't enforce the new law.

Party Chairman Robert Graham said the volunteers, who already are designated as poll watchers, will be the eyes and ears of the GOP to look for those who show up with multiple ballots. And he said they will be given a checklist -- still being developed -- of what to document.

Graham acknowledged that other state laws limit what party-designated observers can actually do inside the polling places. Talking to voters is forbidden, as is photography.

But Graham said they're still free to follow voters out into the parking lot, ask them questions, take their pictures and photograph their vehicles and license plate. That information, he said, might give police and prosecutors the information they need to bring charges.

.....

The law, approved earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature makes it a felony, punishable by a year in state prison, to knowingly collect blank or filled-out ballots from another person.

It is aimed at the practice of various political and civic groups of having volunteers scour neighborhoods for those who had received early ballots but had failed to mail them back in time to be counted. ......

[Angry Dragon]

3. you might be in the wrong website

[muntrv]

4. Shouldn't you be posting at free republic?

[Coyotl]

7. Dang, run to the garden for a tomato and miss a freeper's post.

I'm sure it was entertaining and in need of grammar lessons

[Angry Dragon]

2. they will only catch republicans

[Coyotl]

9. They criminalized this because the effort to assist everyone to vote happened in the WRONG hoods!

The Republicans understand which neighborhoods they get near zero votes in, as did the people helping to turn in ballots on election day, when it was too late to mail them. So they passed a new law criminalizing helping people vote, preventing people from assisting voters in THOSE neighborhoods. Plainly racist.

[liberal N proud]

5. Show up with multiple ballots?

How do you show up with multiple ballots?

Isn't the ballot something you get once you get to the polling place? Even if you are voting absentee, you get one ballot per registered voter.

What am I missing here that they are trying to stop other than a reason to stop people from voting?

[Hav]

6. I thought the same but read the last part of the post

There are apparently groups going through the neighbourhoods and checking for people who forgot to mail back their ballots. They then return the ballots for them.

[Coyotl]

8. They used to do that, then the republicans turned turning in ballots a crime unless it is your own.

No more helping invalids, elderly, friends and neighbors without doing time!