Leaked videos taken from inside a secretive right-wing organization show many top conservative operatives openly advocating ballot harvesting during the 2020 presidential election, even as President Donald Trump accused Democrats of using such tactics to steal elections.
The Washington Post reports that the videos show longtime evangelical operative Ralph Reed boasting of his plans to harvest ballots from multiple places of worship for the benefit of Republican candidates.
“Our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to White evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”
Trump, however, tweeted earlier this year that he wanted to “GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD.”
J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, was also shown on video attacking mail-in voting, which he said he wanted to stop by any means necessary.
“Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” he said as he encouraged conservatives to go out of their way to block mail-in ballots.
