The Idaho House has passed a bill to combat ballot harvesting.
The bill, introduced by House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, will make it a felony to deliver more than 10 ballots to the post office from non-household members.
Delivering fewer than ten ballots for non-household members will be a misdemeanor.
Ballot harvesting involves collecting absentee ballots from other people and delivering them to the post office. There have been several scandals involving people being bribed to fill out their ballots and turn them over with gift cards or other perks.
“Mail-in ballot fraud is so pervasive in some parts of Texas that they have a local name for those who broker election victories: Politiqueros. Unlike in North Carolina, there are rarely consequences for ballot harvesters or the campaigns who hire them in the Lone Star State,” Forbes reported in 2020. “But ballot harvesters can get aggressive, they can cut corners, and they can guarantee votes for the politician or group that hired them by taking physical possession of ballots and voting in place of the legal voter. And in Texas, vote harvesting is illegal, at least to the extent where state law prohibits a voter’s absentee ballot being completed and mailed by someone other than a close relative.”
The Forbes report added, “The practice is more widespread and problematic than most people believe.”
Speaking on the House floor, Moyle said that his bill “tries to make it clear that we don’t like cheaters.”
“In Idaho voting should be easy, but in Idaho cheating should be hard,” he added.
“We are trying to prevent with this bill Idaho going down the road that other states have gone down,” Moyle said “Do we have a problem today? Maybe not. But let’s fix it before we do.”
President Donald Trump released a statement earlier this month about the Democrats using ballot harvesting in the 2020 election.