SO HEY I wanna talk a bit about this:

They are probably taking the ballots to the county seat and turning them in, but what makes it illegal is the mechanism of collection. https://twitter.com/DavidNir/status/1315486036336705536

When I worked in Iowa, one of the things we did as volunteers and organizers was pick up absentee ballots from people who couldn't mail them for whatever reason. We had VERY SPECIFIC rules we had to follow when doing this.

1. We could not fill out a person's ballot for them or help them in any way to complete the ballot.

2. We could not touch it in anyway. If they asked us to pick it up and it was not sealed as necessary, we were instructed to essentially leave until they fixed it.

3. Chain of custody was extremely important. If we lost a ballot, we had to call the police and we would not only lose our jobs but we would likely be prosecuted.

4. Per 3, any ballot that came in after hours/on the weekend had to be kept in a locked, secured location.

5. When the county office opened again, we were to take them over immediately and drop them off. At the time, Iowa didn't require the drop off person to sign or attest to anything, which is why I was able to do it.

So that's the perfect legal process we followed in IA in 2016.

These fake ballot drop off boxes do not meet any of those standards. When a canvasser picks up your ballot, there is a chain of custody that ensures that ballot makes it to its intended location. You know when you hand it off that the volunteer is acting on behalf of a party.

When a ballot came back to the office, it was either immediately delivered, or placed in a secure location to which only I had the key. They were either 1. in my sight, or 2. locked very securely inside a locked office.

Ballot drop boxes like this do not meet the standards for chain of custody. They are not monitored. It's unclear who has access. Some of them appear to be on private property (gun shops, etc). There's no way to know what verification happens once they retrieve the ballots.

It's the difference between handing someone your mail to drop it at the post office and someone setting up an unauthorized mailbox with a promise that they'll collect and send the mail.

There's no direct hand off from the voter, which is the mechanism by which "agent of delivery" in elections functions.

Chain of custody is a big deal and a fake ballot box that the GOP *says* they're using to collect ballots to take in to the county breaks that.

So that's why what they're doing is illegal, and it'll be interesting to watch California come down on them for it.