00:00I'm going to talk about a scandal that is rocking the voting process across California
00:04on the eve of the June 2nd primary election. There have been two separate incidents in which
00:08voting was subject to various kinds of vandalism or interference. At Long Beach,
00:13at a park still named for Cesar Chavez, a voting center was vandalized, and in downtown Los Angeles,
00:19ballots were set on fire inside a ballot drop box. Now, these are being treated as isolated
00:24incidents, but they do remind us of how vulnerable California's voting process is to interference.
00:30One of the reasons California is so vulnerable is it has one of the most permissive voting systems
00:35in the country. It allows your ballot to be counted for up to seven days after election day, as long
00:41as it was postmarked on election day. It also allows ballot harvesting, which is a practice where third
00:47parties can return as many ballots of other people as they can possibly carry. There's no limit,
00:52and you don't have to show any kind of ID when doing so. These practices are fairly unique to
00:56California, and they have created a lot of nationwide suspicion in California's results.
01:01Often, candidates who are leading on election night end up losing several weeks later when all the
01:06ballots are finally counted. There has been a slight correction to this process in that the U.S.
01:12Postal Service is now saying that just because a ballot is in a drop box or a mailbox on election
01:17day doesn't mean it's going to be postmarked that day. So California officials are telling people
01:21to get their ballots in on time or to vote in person. But voters who are looking for reasons to
01:28feel more confident in the results can take heart in the fact that nobody really knows what the net
01:33effect of these incidents will be. And as much as Democrats have used ballot harvesting in the past,
01:38Republicans have started to use it as well. So it might just even out. With that in mind, we encourage
01:43you to go to the polls or drop your ballot off at the drop boxes or in a mailbox and
01:47make your voice heard.
