It’s bad enough that former California governor Jerry Brown quietly made ballot harvesting legal in 2016, but now Gavin Newsom is using the Wuhan Bat Lab virus as an excuse to mandate a vote-by-mail scheme. The RNC and CA GOP have joined to file a lawsuit challenging this latest move to disenfranchise legitimate CA voters.

Newsom’s move to by-pass the state legislature and rewrite California’s whole election code via executive order is as brazen as it is typical of his authoritarian behavior. He’s a shallow political creature whose moral principles are thinner than the hairgel in his Ken-doll mane.

Moreover, in his haste, the Governor created a system that will violate eligible citizens’ right to vote. By ordering that vote-by-mail ballots be automatically sent to every registered voter—including inactive voters, voters with invalid registrations, voters who have moved, voters who have died, and voters who don’t want a ballot—he has created a recipe for disaster. No State that regularly conducts statewide all-mail elections automatically mails ballots to inactive voters because it invites fraud, coercion, theft, and otherwise illegitimate voting. Fraudulent and invalid votes dilute the votes of honest citizens and deprive them of their right to vote in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Make no mistake, Gruesome Newsom isn’t the only Democrat who is trying to grab power by enacting cheat-by-mail. Nancy Pelosi has already tried to attach a nation-wide cheat-by-mail mandate in the China virus relief bills – one in March and in the latest one in May. In the latter she attempts a little Newspeak by calling it Vote At Home.

George Orwell would have SanFranGran understand that 1984 is not a How-To manual.

As cited in the Republicans’ lawsuit, there are numerous studies that point out the opportunity for fraud is overwhelming with mail-in ballots. A 2005 commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by both Jimmy Carter and James Baker, is pretty clear that while proponents insist that vote-by-mail and early-voting are needed to increase voter participation, there is no evidence to support that assertion (page 43) while absentee voting is “the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

Harvesting of ballots by third parties, legal in California, makes it even more difficult to detect fraud. During 2018 mid-terms there was anecdotal reports of Democrat volunteers who showed up at homes to “collect and deliver” ballots, but they would not take any from registered Republicans in the same household. As as we’ve recently seen, mail-in ballots can be easily altered by those with a partisan agenda.

Newsom and Democrats are already facing pressure, not just over the extended lockdown and irrational rules, but over AB5 – a huge factor in Republican Mike Garcia’s victory in Throuple Katie Hill’s district.

Despite an almost 30,000 Democratic registration advantage, the race was expected to be tight. But a 10-point blowout was a shock in a race widely considered a referendum on President Trump. […]

Or Garcia’s victory could be attributed to the rage over AB5, a labor bill authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego intended to stop large employers such as Uber and Lyft from denying worker rights and benefits to their gig employees. It also grossly limited work for freelancers and independent contractors.

A serious revolt ensued with the range of workers in the service, entertainment and hospitality industries coalescing with freelancer writers and photographers to agitate to repeal AB5.

Garcia’s win has startled the Sacramento Ruling class. How dare even a hint of purple mar their solid-blue iron fist.

The GOP has been little more than a rump party in California for some time. May this lawsuit be just one of a long list of muscular pushbacks to the Democrat totalitarians.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

featured image original artwork by Darleen Click