Stanislaus County elections office issues alert about unofficial ballot drop boxes
Stanislaus County election officials are alerting the public about unofficial ballot boxes and has issued warnings about use of the unauthorized boxes.
Donna Linder, county registrar of voters, said Wednesday that three unauthorized ballot boxes have been reported to the election office. She said Wednesday her office sent the code section and information from the Secretary of State to three churches that were using unofficial boxes to collect ballots.
Linder stressed the non-official boxes are prohibited by state law. She said her office received reports that New Life Christian Center in Turlock, Big Valley Grace Community Church in Modesto and one other church were using unauthorized ballot drop boxes. The name of the third church was not immediately available.
California’s secretary of state and attorney general issued a cease and desist order Monday to the California Republican Party, charging the party has been operating unofficial ballot drop boxes in a number of counties.
“Misleading voters is wrong, regardless of who is doing it,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a news release. “Political parties and campaigns can engage in get out the vote efforts, but they cannot violate state law. The unofficial, unauthorized drop boxes in question violate state law and jeopardize the security of voters’ ballots.”
Linder said Thursday the ballot collection boxes at five churches were not necessarily illegal if they stay within the rules of election laws. It is why she sent information spelling out the rules to the churches, Linder said.
GOP party faithful in the Northern San Joaquin Valley suggested the state organization would challenge the cease and desist order in court. State Republican leaders said Wednesday the unofficial boxes are legal and they will continue using them.
Linder said “as far as she knows” the churches stopped using the boxes after they were notified by the county.
In an Oct. 11 memo to county election offices, Padilla said only county election officials have authority to establish the location and hours for ballot drop boxes. Stanislaus County currently has 16 authorized indoor drop boxes and two outdoor ones for collecting ballots for the vote-by-mail election in progress. The locations are listed at Stanvote.com.
The official boxes that voters are supposed to use bear the Stanislaus County logo and the words “official ballot box”, with instructions translated in different languages.
A campaign representative for Ted Howze, a candidate in the congressional District 10 race, did not confirm a Turlock Journal story that said Howze’s campaign provided the box to New Life Christian Center.
The campaign issued a statement: “In a state where our Democrat opponents use felons and illegal aliens to harvest ballots from their voters’ front porches, we support allowing voters to turn in their ballots to trained church volunteers at their trusted places of worship.”
Mark Kleiderlein, chairman of the elder board at Big Valley church, said Wednesday the county elections office has not contacted the church.
He said a locked box, marked “ballots”, is brought to outdoor services at the church campus’ baseball field, where church members can drop their ballots for convenience. The rest of the time the locked box is in a church office where staff are present.
Big Valley members can bring their ballots to the office for dropoff. Kleiderlein said the arrangements for the ballot box were made with Ted Howze’s staff. The box was used for the first time at outdoor services Sunday, the church official said. Howze staff and a volunteer have taken one batch of ballots to the county elections office in downtown Modesto.
The church plans to have the ballots picked up Mondays and Thursdays. The box also will be used for Wednesday services and this Sunday when indoor worship resumes with the county’s move to the state’s coronavirus red tier status, Kleiderlein said.
Kleiderlein said he understood the church’s use of the ballot box is proper. Instead of placing an unofficial box at a location for use by the public, the Big Valley box is for its membership.
”I am not a lawyer but my understanding of the rules is: If you’re doing it as a private organization for the convenience of your members, there is no issue,” he said. ”It does not surprise me that the Secretary of State in a Democratic controlled state does not like the fact there can be ballots delivered that are not necessarily friendly to their leftist causes.”
In an email, Howze’s campaign manager Tim Rosales pointed to an Orange County Register report regarding “ballot parties” held by the Democratic Party to encourage people to leave their ballots.
The cease and desist order said the state had received complaints about unauthorized drop boxes in Fresno, Orange and Los Angeles counties.
Linder said she would notify the Secretary of State about the unofficial ballot boxes reported in this county. New Life Christian Center did not return a phone message from The Modesto Bee. Efforts to reach Rick Countryman, co-senior pastor at Big Valley and a candidate for the Modesto mayor’s office, were not successful.
Voters may legally give their mail ballot to a trusted individual, such as a family member or friend, to deliver it to the county elections office. A newer state law allows voters to entrust their ballots to a campaign worker. With the use of unofficial drop boxes, the person who delivers the ballots to county elections is not meeting a requirement that the designated person sign their name to the ballot envelope, Padilla’s office said.
Linder explained there are three steps for returning a ballot on behalf of a voter:
— It’s the voters’ choice to designate someone to return their ballot.
— The designated returner must fill out the back of the ballot envelope and sign it.
— The designated person must return the voted ballot in its sealed envelope within three days.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 6:19 PM.
