 Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been screaming about the likelihood that voter fraud will end up rigging the 2020 election. In spite of the fact that in actuality, the real voter fraud rate is 0.0025% according to a Washington Post study. So it's not that they're actually fearful of voter fraud, but they want to justify more draconian measures that would suppress the vote. It's why they institute voter ID laws. That's why they reduce the number of polling stations in communities that are disproportionately black and brown. It's why they try to make sure that as few people vote as possible, because they know that if turnout is high, they're going to lose that election. So they have to resort to attacking democracy directly and lying in order to hang on to power. But in an effort to prove, I guess, how likely voter fraud is, we have a situation where they potentially are breaking laws themselves. So as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reports, California's top election official is investigating reports that the state's Republican Party has set up unauthorized ballot drop boxes posing as official in several major counties in a legal practice that could deceive voters into depositing their ballots at unsecure locations. Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes, especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes, is not just misleading to voters. It's a violation of state law. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement responding to reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties. As the local Orange County Register reported late Sunday in a photo posted to social media last week, a young man wearing a mask with Orange County congressional candidate Michelle Steele's name on it is holding a mail ballot and giving a thumbs up next to a box about the size of a file cabinet labeled official ballot drop box. The post from Jordan Teig, a regional field director for the California Republican Party, encouraged people to message him for convenient locations to drop their own ballots. The Register reported. That was just one of several instances of potentially illegal election activity by Republican officials that has been reported in recent days. On Saturday night, the Register noted reports emerged of a metal box in front of Freedom's Way Baptist Church in Castaic that had a sign matching the one on the Orange County box. The church posted on social media that the box was approved and brought by the GOP. The Register reported. The post said church officials don't have a key to the box and that the GOP officials pick up the ballots. On its website, the Fresno County Republican Party also shared a list of secure ballot locations. None are official county drop box sites, with the local GOP instead listing its own headquarters, multiple gun shops and other local businesses. Under California state law, only county election officials are authorized to set up ballot drop boxes to ensure adequate security. So this is not surprising to me. It's not surprising at all, but it's a little bit ironic that they're doing this now after screaming about the problems that ballot harvesting, otherwise known as ballot collecting, poses to our democracy. Ballot collecting basically allows someone who is sanctioned by the state to pick up the ballots of elderly and disabled voters and drop them off at secure locations. But here what they're doing is they're just saying, look. We have our own drop off sites, so feel free to drop them off even if they're not necessarily official and they may be insecure. I mean, this is a hacky point, but I'm going to make it anyway. Imagine if Democrats did this. This would be evidence that voter fraud is a thing. The Democratic Party is cheating. They're tampering with votes. They're trying to create these insecure ballot drop off locations so they can go through them and figure out who's a Republican and throw those ballots in the garbage. That's exactly what they would be saying. But when they do it, it's perfectly fine. Even if it's illegal, oh, they're Republicans, so we trust them. Our team would never do anything wrong. It's only the Democrats who would commit voter fraud. It's only the Democratic Party who does election fraud, which are two different things, by the way. It's never the Republican Party. This is deeply, deeply frustrating. And there's a reason why we shouldn't trust them with our ballots if you're in California. Again, this is the party that constantly engages in voter suppression. And that doesn't mean that Democrats don't also engage in voter suppression. They do this a lot during the primaries. But Republicans are open about the fact now that they have to suppress the vote in order to win elections. They don't say that explicitly, but their actions are very clear. I mean, look at what they just did in 2018. As Secretary of State, Brian Kemp oversaw his own race. He did not recuse himself. And what happened? Well, conveniently, hundreds of thousands of voters were purged, who registered to vote. And he won, narrowly, but he still won. They do anything they can to win, even if that means destroying democracy. And they do all of this while accusing Democrats of being the ones that are rigging elections. Now, I mean, they certainly know how to fuck over progressives. I'm not denying that. But when it comes to the general election, then it's the Republicans who always try to do everything in their power to suppress the vote. There's a reason why they never say, get out and vote, or they rarely do. If they do, they speak specifically to the Republican base. But do you think they honestly want more people to get out and vote? Do you honestly think that they want to enhance democracy, bring more states into the union, make DC a state, Puerto Rico a state? Of course not. Because if we further enhance our democracy, Republicans lose more elections. So the only way they hold on to power is to make sure that the other side is demoralized, disenfranchised, and that's how they win. But when they do stuff like this, nothing to see turn away. Trump probably won't tweet about this. Or if he does, he'll blame Democrats for it, or Democratic Party voters for it. It's just, it's ridiculous. So make sure that you double check before you drop off your ballot in the selection that you're taking it to a secure location. Because you can't not be extra rigorous with your vote this time because of everything that's going on, because of Trump's postmaster general, Louis Joy, doing a lot of shenanigans that could potentially delay your vote from getting counted or whatnot. Just don't take any chances, double check. And a lot of states have online systems where once you drop off your ballot, you can check to confirm that it's been counted. My state of Oregon has this, so once I send in my ballot, I can see that my vote was counted. I think that it's really important that you take these precautions to make sure that your vote is heard because if there is a way that they can disenfranchise you, they're going to do it. And you don't really have to worry about this in really deep blue states as much. But in red states or red counties in blue states, which may be the case in California to shift local elections in their favor, they're going to do that. So you really have to be careful and be cognizant of the fact that you have to take your vote into your own hands and make sure you triple check everything. Make sure you filled it out properly. Make sure that you drop it off at a secure location and check online at the website that your vote was in fact received and ultimately counted.