Ballot harvesting - the lure of corruption which is too compelling.

My suspicion is that ballot harvesting is going to be an important point of discussion over the next few years. It appears to me to be the most insidious form of voting suppression and corruption and while it is being discussed in some quarters, there does not appear to be much of a national conversation.

From On Ballot Harvesting, GOP May Have to Push Back by Susan Crabtree.

The ballot-harvesting practice has faced new scrutiny in recent months after Republican candidates in California saw their Election Day leads disintegrate as later-arriving Democratic votes were counted in the weeks following the 2018 midterms. Republicans across the country, including then-Speaker Paul Ryan, raised the specter that California’s expanded ballot-harvesting law was responsible. Ryan called the Golden State’s vote tallying system “bizarre” and something that “defies logic.”

In the North Carolina case, the roles were reversed. Harris, a Republican congressional candidate, used a political operative who was known for his illegal get-out-the-vote methods -- including collecting ballots from certain areas and discarding them -- to narrowly defeat Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out the Democrats’ situational outrage over the practice.

“For years and years, every Republican who dared to call for common-sense safeguards for Americans’ ballots was demonized by Democrats and their allies,” he said. “We were hit with left-wing talking points insisting that voter fraud wasn’t real. That fraud just didn’t happen.”

“But I have noticed with interest that Democrats’ new focus on this practice has yet to extend to California – where it is a completely legal, common practice,” added McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

Both parties practice ballot harvesting to some degree in some places. And both ought, on sound principle, to be entirely against the practice.