California orders GOP to remove unofficial ballot boxes

“I’m trying to be careful with how I say this, but the reports we are hearing are disturbing.”Padilla declined to speculate on why Republicans would be collecting votes via unofficial drop boxes.“Our interest is in protecting the integrity of this election,” he said.Barajas said the party’s drop boxes just provide voters with “another opportunity” to cast their ballots.In a news release, the California Republican Party said state law does not specifically ban them from collecting ballots in a box. He said it wasn’t clear how many voters had used unofficial boxes but after receiving reports about them, he notified the state and district attorney’s office, which is investigating.Rachel Potucek, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Orange County, said she didn’t know what Republicans planned to do with the ballots they collected and worried they could target Democratic areas with boxes to suppress votes.There also were reports of GOP drop boxes at a church in the Los Angeles County community of Castaic and at various locations in Fresno County in California’s farm-rich Central Valley.Fresno County Republicans said they will remove the boxes and ballots will be turned in to county election officials, which was always the plan, the Sacramento Bee reported.___Taxin reported from Orange County, California.