Democrat Representative Tulsi Gabbard spoke Monday night about the recently released Project Veritas videos, which showed evidence of a ballot harvesting scheme in Minneapolis.
Rep. Gabbard called the videos “further evidence of the need to ban ballot harvesting” in elections, and said that doing so would protect “our sacred right to vote.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe III posted about the videos on Twitter:
BREAKING: @IlhanOmar connected cash-for-ballots harvesting scheme EXPOSED
“Money is the king in everything”; harvester boasts harvesting HUNDREDS of 2020 absentee ballots ILLEGALLY! “Numbers do not lie…these here are all absentee ballots…my car is full…”#BallotHarvesting pic.twitter.com/cB2Bz31mSY
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) September 28, 2020
Gabbard’s comments came after the Minneapolis Police Department announced on Monday afternoon that it would be “looking into” and evaluating “allegations of voter fraud”, following the release of the first set of videos.
ALLEGATIONS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING EVALUATED. ✅ The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting. We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.
— Minneapolis Police (@MinneapolisPD) September 28, 2020
“Congress needs to pass our bipartisan bill to ban ballot harvesting so no one can exploit our sacred right to vote,” Gabbard tweeted.
Congress needs to pass our bipartisan bill to ban ballot harvesting so no one can exploit our sacred right to vote. https://t.co/5Vh7rLsQDa
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 29, 2020
“Project Veritas offers further evidence of the need to ban ballot harvesting. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s been abused to help both R & D candidates, including in North Carolina & California. Please help by telling your congressional rep to pass our bipartisan bill HR8285,” Gabbard added, in a second tweet.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1310768812883496966
In both of her Twitter posts on the subject, Gabbard shared a video that she made more than a week ago, in which she announced that she had introduced a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives which would ban ballot harvesting.
“Hey, everybody, we’re getting closer and closer to election day now, and it is critical to remember that the strength of our democracy lies in the integrity of our elections, that every one of us has to have faith that our vote will count. But right now, there are still many states in our country that allow for something called ballot harvesting. This is a system that allows for third parties to collect and deliver ballots for other people, potentially large numbers of people. Unfortunately, ballot harvesting has allowed for fraud and abuse to occur by those who could tamper with or discard ballots to try to sway an election for or against a certain candidate or party,” Gabbard said as she began the video.
“Now, our vote is our voice. So whether in the midst of a pandemic, as we are now, where mail-in voting is likely to drastically increase, or even in a normal election, no one, no one should get in between a voter and the ballot box. Now, while some states have prohibited vote harvesting or ballot harvesting, many have not, which again allows for abuse from third parties collecting and mishandling ballots. This is something that we’ve actually seen happen in recent elections,” Gabbard continued.
“Now to protect the integrity of our vote in our elections, I’ve introduced legislation called the Election Fraud Prevention Act with my friend Representative Rodney Davis. Our bipartisan bill protects the chain of custody for every one of our ballots by prohibiting funding from going to states that allow this practice of ballot harvesting to occur. This bill will actually encourage states to stop this practice that’s ripe for fraud, and that poses a serious threat to the integrity of our elections. And we urge our leaders in Congress to take up this legislation quickly to support and ensure the integrity of our elections,” Gabbard concluded.
Banning ballot harvesting is not a partisan issue. It's been used & abused in states like North Carolina and California & is ripe for fraud.
That's why I intro'd HR8285, the Election Fraud Prevention Act w/ @RodneyDavis – to protect the integrity of our elections & our democracy pic.twitter.com/ltZhaenSVB
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 18, 2020