State drops legal threat over GOP’s ballot boxes
SACRAMENTO — California will not take legal action over the unofficial ballot drop boxes that the state Republican Party set up in at least three counties after state officials said the GOP made changes to its collection system — an assertion the party immediately disputed, raising the prospect of a future showdown.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said during a news conference Friday that the California Republican Party, through its lawyers, had agreed “to no longer deploy these unstaffed, unsecured, unofficial and unauthorized ballot drop boxes.”
But the GOP argues the boxes are legal and plans to keep using them in several key congressional and state legislative districts where Republicans are trying to flip back seats they
lost two years ago or defend against strong Democratic challenges, party spokesman Hector Barajas said Friday.
“We can’t agree to not do something we weren’t doing to begin with,” he said in a statement. “This is a thuggish voter intimidation and vote suppression tactic.”
The appearance of the GOP collection boxes — some of which were falsely labeled “official” — at churches, gyms, gun stores and local party headquarters in Los Angeles, Orange and Fresno counties, raised alarms over the weekend that voters could be misled.
Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra issued a ceaseanddesist letter Monday, ordering the Republican Party to remove the collection boxes by Thursday because they did not meet security standards and no designated person would be signing for the ballot when the voter dropped it off. California law allows voters to designate someone else to return their mail ballot, but the person must provide their name, signature and relationship to the voter on the ballot and then deliver it to an official collection site or put it in the mail within three days.
Although Republican officials and lawmakers remained defiant throughout the week, Padilla said Friday that the state had won concessions that would bring the GOP ballot collection operation into compliance with election law.
“The Republican Party has tried to spin their unlawful conduct by playing the victim all week long,” Padilla said. “I want to be clear, the
California Republican Party can conduct ballot collection activities, but they have to play by the rules and follow state law.”
Barajas said the party moved all of its ballot boxes indoors, where they could be supervised, and took down any signs portraying the boxes as official, but had otherwise made no concessions to the state. The party does not plan to have anyone sign for the ballots when voters drop them off.
In a letter Wednesday responding to the ceaseanddesist order, an attorney for the party rejected the legal interpretation that the drop boxes were prohibited under state election code. The letter cited a 2018 law stipulating that a ballot won’t be disqualified solely because a person who returned it on behalf of the voter did not include the necessary identifying information or signature.
“It’s not required of them,” Barajas said Friday. “Why is it being required of us?”
Becerra said that stance amounted to rhetoric and that the party had behaved differently in private than it was portraying in public. But he added that the state was continuing its investigation and had subpoenaed additional information from the GOP. He suggested that if the boxes reappeared, he might then take action.
“Until we get evidence of it, we have to assume that everyone is trying to comply with the law,” Becerra said. “We act based on credible information about violations of the law.”