On Your Honor

Part 4 of 7

We would love to believe that all people are honest and trustworthy, but few people are naïve enough to live life as if that were true. 

Nevertheless, while California legislators continue to strangle the state’s citizens with over-the-top rules and regulations in every other arena of civic life, they continue to loosen the regulations surrounding elections and operate strictly on the principle of On Your Honor. 

Parts 1-3 in this article series discussed California’s “on your honor” policies of

• non-verification of citizenship
• lax voter roll maintenance
• universal mailing of ballots

Now we turn our attention to the state’s decision to steer voters to return their ballots through ways that continue to operate outside of public view.

• encourages voters to place their completed ballots into U.S. mail or drop boxes. Yet there are no safeguards against loss, theft or vandalism, or ways to remedy such occurrences, should they be discovered.
• allows unrestricted and uncontrolled ballot harvesting, enabling people to collect and return ballots for others with no chain of custody protections.
  • There is nothing in place to prevent ballot harvesters from turning in ballots for dead, apathetic, or ineligible voters.
  • State law prohibits disqualifying a ballot solely because the person returning it does not provide name, relationship to the voter, or signature.
  • Though technically against the law, there is no real way to prevent ballot harvesters from coercing voters or paying them to vote a particular way.
  • There is nothing to prevent ballot harvesters from sifting, sorting or culling ballots, turning in only those they believe will benefit their point of view.
  • There is no way to prevent ballot harvesters from opening and altering ballots before turning them in.

If the only way to vote were in person (with limited exceptions), our elections would be far more observable and secure.  That is because traditional in-person voting does not suffer from the drawbacks of voting with ballots in envelopes that require extensive transportation and processing.

• In-person voting restricts ballots to physical locations, preventing ballots from ending up in the wrong hands.
• In-person voting requires voters to physically enter polling locations and present themselves:
  • Especially if photo ID were required, only live and legitimate voters could cast a vote.
  • People who have departed the state and are voting elsewhere are highly unlikely to travel back in order to cast an illegal second vote.
  • In-person voting occurs privately, in secrecy and under the protection of elections officials, removing opportunities for coercion.

By encouraging the widespread use of ballots in envelopes,

California knowingly creates numerous opportunities

for election manipulation.

Sadly, because these State-enabled methods are “easier” and more “convenient,” the lion’s share of voters now embrace them, unaware of or choosing to ignore the potential threat to the integrity of their own vote, and to the integrity of election results.

The constant pressure to vote by mail as early as possible, coming from virtually all elected officials, political parties and media pundits, is difficult to counter with the Truth. The automatic delivery of ballots to every voter also leads many voters to believe there is no other way to vote.

There IS another, safer way for Californians to cast their ballots.

Please stay tuned for our next article in this continuing series of On Your Honor.

pdf of article 

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On Your Honor part 4 of 7     ©Election Integrity Project®California, Inc. copyrighted 2023