Exclusive – Shawn Steel on Ballot Harvesting in California: Republicans Must ‘Adapt or Die’
Robert Kraychik 14 Nov 2022
Shawn Steel, Republican National Committee member from California and husband of Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA), said in an interview aired on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday that Republicans must “adapt or die” in the Golden State with respect to legalized ballot harvesting.
“It’s a different game because of ballot harvesting,” Steel told Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak. “Several states, they outlawed it in the last two years. I don’t like it, but since that’s the rule in California, you have to adapt or die, and so we’ve adapted it. We’re not ashamed of it, because that’s explicitly the law.”
Steel explained how his wife utilized ballot harvesting as part of her successful reelection campaign in California’s 48th Congressional District. Steel’s campaign secured votes through ballot harvesting in Korean and Vietnamese churches.
Ballot harvesting in churches, he added, built trust with Republican voters wary of the trustworthiness of such a process. He said working through “church elders” gave Korean-American and Vietnamese-American churchgoers “a great deal of comfort” related the chain of custody of their votes.
“The custody chain is clear-cut,” he remarked, emphasizing the importance of building trust with Republican voters towards the ballot harvesting process over previous elections. “Same thing in the Vietnamese community and the Korean community, and it turns out that it’s a matter [of] does the person trust the person that you’re giving your ballot to? That’s a big part of it.”
He added, “Now we have several generations, after three election cycles that [think to themselves], ‘Yeah, I can give it to this organization. I know they’ll take care of my ballot. I know they’re doing the right thing.'”
Steel noted that his wife won her reelection bid in a district with many immigrants-turned-citizens. He recalled that California’s 48th Congressional District is a “plus-five Democrat seat” and that “Biden carried it by six points” in the 2020 presidential election.
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https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2022/11/14/exclusive-shawn-steel-ballot-harvesting-california-republicans-must-adapt-or-die/
