We all saw how California's messed-up election system cost Spencer Pratt his spot in the Los Angeles Mayoral runoff, and it's maddening. Part of the problem is ballot harvesting, where volunteers collect absentee or mail-in ballots and deliver them to election officials, drop boxes, or polling places.
The practice is fertile ground for fraud and corruption, with reports of harvesters bribing homeless individuals for their votes, dumps of hundreds of ballots in drop boxes, and ballots with smiley faces instead of signatures.
Scott Jennings joined CNN to say the practice of ballot harvesting should be punted into the sun.
He's correct.
California’s electoral system is insane and of course taking this long to count ballots leads to questions! Ballot harvesting ought to be punted into the Sun. My take on @cnn tonight… pic.twitter.com/bAlVnSuczj
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) June 9, 2026
"The system's crazy," Jennings said. "If you wanted to design a system to make people question the results every year, to make people wonder if there was any funny business going on, you would design it precisely as they have designed it in California."
"But, as he pointed out, it's legal today. I don't think the ballot harvesting ought to be legal, I think vote by mail is inherently less secure than voting in person, counting all these ballots for weeks and weeks," Jennings continued, "it does lead to a lot of questions. But do I think it's fraudulent on its face that a Republican didn't get more than 25 percent of the vote in a mayor's race in LA? No, that's not inherently fraudulent."
"California routinely picks the literal worst people in the world to run the state and the cities. They have done that in this case, that does not seem to be a shocking outcome," Jennings added.
"It kind of stinks that it takes so long to count the ballots. I think ballot harvesting stinks and I think vote by mail and mailing out millions of ballots to people who have never asked for one," Jennings said.