PHOENIX — ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ is entitled to make “ballot harvesting†a crime despite a federal law that allows anyone to deliver a letter, the state’s legal defenders are arguing.
At issue is a 2016 state law that makes it a felony for anyone to handle anyone else’s voted or un-voted ballot. Violators can be sentenced to a year in state prison and a $150,000 fine.
In new legal filings, Joseph La Rue, an assistant attorney general, acknowledged there is a federal statute that spells out that federal law “shall not prohibit the conveyance or transmission of letters or packets by private hands without compensation.â€
What makes that significant is that challengers say once someone puts an early ballot into an envelope and gives it to someone else to take to the polls, it becomes “mail†which the state cannot regulate.
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But La Rue is telling U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes that those seeking to void a 2016 state law are misreading that federal law.
He said all it does is create a “narrow exception†to the monopoly the U.S. Postal Service has in delivering mail. Specifically, he said it says federal law cannot bar the private delivery of mail.
“There is no general, freestanding authorization — let alone federally protected right — for individuals to carry any piece of mail (or, in this case, ballots that are not mail) unencumbered by state regulation,†La Rue said. The U.S. Constitution gives states broad power to regulate how elections are conducted, he said.
The practice at issue involves civic and political groups who have previously gone door-to-door into neighborhoods ahead of elections to see if residents have returned the early ballots they have requested. If not, they offer to bring them directly to polling places, especially if there is a chance that a ballot put in the mail will not reach county officials by election day.
Republican lawmakers said this creates an opportunity for fraud.
Rayes dismissed an earlier lawsuit challenging the law on the basis that it has a disparate effect on minorities.
This new suit, brought on behalf of Rivko Knox of the League of Women Voters, argues that the ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ statute is precluded by the federal law saying anyone can deliver mail as long as there is no charge.
