Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward provides an update today on the Maricopa County ballot audit and other election integrity issues.

As Mrs. Ward notes the hand count portion of the audit is complete with only the braille ballots left to be reviewed.  However, one of the larger issues of election integrity needs to continue being highlighted, ballot harvesting.  The issue of ballot harvesting is rife with the potential for fraud.  Mrs Ward notes the process of ballot harvesting does not align with chain-of-custody requirements and the people, groups and organizations who conduct ballot harvesting have a sketchy history.

What the chairwoman calls “ballot harvesters”, should also be identified as “voting mules”.  The term mule will surface more frequently as it differentiates between taking custody of a legitimate ballot on behalf of a voter, versus a process of creating votes through manipulation of ballots and voter files.

A mule will collect or retrieve blank ballots, take them to a centralized processing facility where they are filled out, and then drop them off at ballot collection sites.  While both processes are fraught with election manipulation, there is a significant difference in what a harvester does -vs- what a mule does.

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