Biden Is Using Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Ballot Harvesting and Drop Boxes

A U.S. congresswoman said on Tuesday that a Biden executive order could potentially use taxpayer dollars to fund the use of ballot harvesting, which could include the use of unsupervised ballot drop boxes, in U.S. elections — leaving election integrity experts highly concerned about how this could lead to potential voter fraud.

During a panel discussion at the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, D.C., Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) described her primary concerns about election integrity after her own House race in 2020 turned out much closer than anticipated due to irregular election returns.

“This is what worries me: After all that has been done [to ban “Zuckerbucks”], President Biden signed an executive order taking $1 billion in taxpayer money — not in private money from Mark Zuckerberg — and is putting it into vote harvesting schemes using HUD, the Small Business Administration, and any bureaucratic arm of the federal government they can use in key areas around our communities to try to get votes out through harvesting and intimidation and manipulation of the people in these vulnerable areas,” she said. “This is something that we think is federal overreach. It’s a misuse of our tax dollars, but also it’s an attempt to federalize our elections insidiously through the back door.”

Ballot (or “vote”) harvesting is a highly controversial practice in which political operatives collect absentee ballots from the private residences of voters and transfer them directly to a polling place or election office. Some ballot harvesting efforts have also used ballot drop boxes, which resemble public mailboxes, in which anyone can put in ballots.

Due to the high chance of these practices being used for voter fraud, many states have laws prohibiting such practices.

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