Leftists think they've got one on the Republicans over the recent judicial ruling over electoral fraud in North Carolina, calling for a new congressional election.

Raleigh News & Observer: "After a stunning reversal by Republican Mark Harris, North Carolina election officials Thursday unanimously ordered a new election in the 9th Congressional District, which has gained national attention as the last unresolved House race for the 2018 election.  The state elections board's vote came after four days of testimony about what the board's staff called 'a coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme' in Bladen and Robeson counties.  And it came less than an hour after a startling announcement by Harris, who had been fighting to have his apparent victory certified. ... The state board will set dates for a new election in the district with election officials outlining a possible May primary and October general election.

Here's the Democratic gloat from the Washington Post: "A federal election will be rerun because of fraud.  Republicans aren't talking about it much."

Here's Politico's headline: "Damaged GOP faces tough path in North Carolina election do-over."

I've got news for them.  It doesn't.

Speaking as a Republican, why shouldn't there be a new election?  Fraud has been committed, and anyone who has principles about free and fair elections is going to want that result thrown out.  Most Republicans do, so the whole North Carolina spectacle is as disgusting to Republicans as it is to Democrats.  And yes, a redo is likely to lead to a Democratic pickup of North Carolina's 9th District seat, given that Democrats are likely to be even more energized by the scandal than they had been earlier.  If you know that your ballot wasn't counted, you'd be darn sure to go to the polling place on the new election day and turn it in to the ballot box yourself to make sure it is counted.  People's votes should count, so whatever the outcome, fair elections deserve to be the standard and the lesson.

The sorry spectacle does have a silver lining for Republicans.  The incident shows just how dangerous ballot-harvesting is.  Here is what BuzzFeed reports that the state's investigators found:

The state board's investigation and testimonies this week showed:

• Absentee ballots were collected directly from voters — which is against the law — with no witnesses signing or only one of two required witnesses signing.  Unsealed ballots were also collected.
• Dowless held the ballots at his home or office — including blank or incomplete ballots — before turning them in.
• He instructed people to falsely sign as witnesses.
• And to cover his conduct, he made sure the ink matched on the forms, that mailed ballots were sent from a post office near the voter, and that ballots were taken to the post office in small batches.

See what ballot-harvesting can lead to?  The whole scandal shows just how bad the practice of ballot-harvesting is, just how subject to abuse it is in the aftermath of the "harvest," and why the practice is ready for a congressional law to ban the practice nationally.  Call it the Remember North Carolina Vote Integrity Act, and pass that ban. 

Where such a ban would be felt is primarily in California, where ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal and a lot of us have lost confidence in the integrity of our elections as a result.  Democrats took at least seven seats in the congressional midterms based on these exact same vote-harvesting practices, and you can bet that the Democratic operatives who did the harvesting for that result could just as easily have engaged in the same abuses that were seen in North Carolina.  What's more, because California is now a one-party state as a result of it, there is very little likelihood that the state can reform itself.  It has to be done nationally, because the products of these harvestings are starting to send questionably elected Democrats to Congress.

How bad is it in California because vote-harvesting is now a way of life?

Democrats sent actual foreign nationals to the homes of voters in the last election, where they questionably politicked over the voters as the latter filled out their ballots (something that would be illegal at a polling station) to vote a certain way.  Remember this?

Gabriela Cruz, who was brought to the U.S. illegally when she was 1, couldn't vote, but in the final hours before the Nov. 6 election, she was making one last run to get people to the polls.

The sun was setting in Modesto when she found Ronald Silva, 41, smoking a cigarette on a tattered old couch behind a group home.  He politely tried to wave her off until she reminded him he had a right that she as an immigrant without citizenship didn't have.

Imagine a foreign national standing over you as you fill out your ballot, giving how-to-vote election advice to ensure that you vote a particular way, and then collected your ballot as a "new service."

Now, if you didn't vote the way the Democrats wanted, it might just happen that your vote wouldn't be turned in, which is what occurred in North Carolina.

If you were indifferent, or registered illegally to vote, you might just have handed it to him to fill it out for you to make him go away.  If you moved away, the harvesters might know where your old address was and when that (unasked for) mail-in ballot would arrive in your unoccupied mailbox.

And with electoral returns being posted as they were counted, instead of after all the ballots were turned in, the ballot-harvesters would know just where to go, who voted, how big the turnout was, to strategize how to get the best harvest.  Sure enough, in California, this same ballot-harvesting that was illegally practiced in North Carolina is completely legal and completely responsible for deep-red Orange County suddenly going blue in the last congressional election.  Candidate after candidate who had been leading in the 2018 midterm count all of a sudden saw those large leads reversed, with all of them shifting to the Democratic side, with leftists taking all the congressional slots.  

The defenders of these harvestings, such as the Los Angeles Times editorial page, say ballot-harvesting is indeed troubling, but Democrats wouldn't dream of cheating to win an election.  Really? 

What North Carolina shows is how strong the potential for fraud in California really is and why a federal law is needed to ban it.  Will Democrats step up to the plate even if it means losing California?  I have a funny feeling they aren't going to harp on this as much as the press gloating suggests they are.  They're going to go all quiet once they realize the implications of standing up for free and fair elections by ending the practice of ballot-harvesting.  It would hit them in the face.

Image credit: Martin Pettitt via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.