California officials subpoena state Republicans for information on ballot drop boxes

California officials have issued subpoenas for more information on the state Republican Party’s use of unofficial ballot drop boxes.

In a call with reporters on Friday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Republicans have committed to a number of significant concessions in their ballot collection activities, and the state has asked for more information from the party. The investigation is ongoing, Becerra said, and the state will take legal action if they find credible evidence of wrongdoing.

They declined to specify whether use of ballot-collection boxes is illegal if other criteria are met.

“We can’t hold someone’s hand in everything they do. We think the law is pretty straightforward,” Becerra said. “Anyone who wishes to participate in a process where you collect the vote: please make sure you’re doing it appropriately.”

Following reports earlier this week of unofficial drop boxes appearing in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange Counties, Padilla and Becerra issued cease-and-desist letters to the CA GOP and local affiliates to stop the use of the boxes.

According to the letter, some boxes were erroneously marked as “official” and misled voters to think they were using secure drop boxes. The California Republican Party later said it did not authorize or promote the collection boxes as “official,” and after learning that such a label was used on some boxes, the party corrected the error.

Republicans said they will continue to use the drop boxes. They say the boxes have always been attended, and that volunteers deliver the ballots to elections officials within 72 hours. The party will accept ballots delivered to a local party office or headquarters and will make boxes, and instructions on its proper use, available to any person or organization desiring to collect ballots.

Ballot collection, allowing voters to certify someone to deliver their mail ballot for them, is legal is California. It can be used between individuals, and in recent elections, campaign volunteers have used it to go door to door and collect ballots for voters who want assistance returning them.

The law clearly states that an individual who returns a ballot on behalf of the voter must sign the envelope and state their relationship to the voter, Padilla said. A provision in the law says a ballot will not be rejected just because a returner doesn’t sign the envelope, but it’s meant to protect the voter, not exempt the returner from responsibility, according to state officials.

“What’s problematic here is that, when the chain of custody is lost, there is nobody to guarantee that all the ballots were indeed delivered to the county and delivered on a timely basis,” Padilla said.

The California Republican Party has said it will continue to operate drop boxes in a secure and supervised manner without the word “official.” If the law requires officials to count ballots even in the absence of a returner signature, then it’s not a requirement of returners, the party has argued. But on Friday, Thomas Hiltachk, attorney for the California GOP, said the party is instructing the volunteers to sign the ballot forms.

Hector Barajas, spokesman for the California Republican Party, said the state officials didn’t bother to learn the facts before making accusations, and said the party has not conceded to anything.

“The California Republican Party made no concession to the Attorney General or the Secretary of State,” he said. “In fact, in two phones calls with nine Attorney General lawyers, they never requested the California Republican Party to do anything except provide information about our program and to turn over records, including names of voters, which we have declined to do.”

“This is a thuggish voter intimidation and vote suppression tactic by our Democratic Attorney General and Secretary of State,” Barajas said.

This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 1:48 PM.