THE NEW LANGUAGE – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:  Occasionally there are new phrases that enter into politics, and become part of our political vocabulary.  The newest phrase is "ballot harvesting," and it appears to have had a major impact in flipping Republican congressional seats to the Democrats in the recent election.  From Daily Caller:

As the polls closed on election day last month, six California Republican House candidates, including Representatives Dana Rohrabacher, Steve Knight, and Mimi Walters, were ahead in their prospective races. However, as the absentee and provisional ballots rolled in over the intervening weeks, all six lost to their Democratic opponents.

The case of Korean-American GOP candidate Young Kim was another example critics cited. On election night, Kim held an 8,000 vote lead over her Democratic opponent Gil Cisneros, and even attended freshman orientation in Washington, D.C. before watching her lead, and her victory, slowly evaporate over the subsequent weeks.

The results drew the attention of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“California just defies logic to me,” said Ryan at a Washington Post live event. “We were only down 26 seats the night of the election, and three weeks later, we lost basically every California contested race. This election system they have — I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

The stunning turnaround in California, of all states, can be attributed to several factors, as conservative critics like The Federalist’s Bre Payton wrote, but the most significant of those seemed to be the practice of “ballot harvesting.”

Passed as a barely noticed change in the state’s vote by mail procedures in 2016 and signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, California’s AB 1921 allows voters to give any third party — not just a relative or someone living in the same household, as was previously the law — to collect and turn in anyone else’s completed ballot.

Called “ballot harvesting,” critics say the practice is ripe for fraud. Consider “Lulu,” who was recorded trying to “harvest” what she thought was a Democratic voter’s ballot in Rep. Knight’s district.

It’s a “new service,” said Lulu, for “like, people who are supporting the Democratic party.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 250,000 such ballots were used in Orange County alone, resulting in a Democratic sweep there.

And...

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Republicans who admitted that Democrats clearly beat them at the new game and that, to compete, they will have to conduct their own “ballot harvesting” efforts.

Before its passage, a group opposed to the bill wrote: “AB 1921 would allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote by mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion, “granny farming," and automated forgery. AB 1921 solves no problem that a simple stamp can’t solve.”

COMMENT:  Please notice that there are few questions asked about this by the mainstream media.  Why would there be?  The correct side, the liberal side, won in every case.  Why ask questions? 

This has the makings of a major scandal.  It is absolutely true that the new system of "ballot harvesting" has the potential for fraud, for even swinging a presidential election. 

Will it be stopped?  In California the Dems control all the political machinery.  The press is on their side.  Who's there to stop it?

December 2,  2018