Republicans nationwide have been blistering in their declarations that "ballot harvesting," the process by which volunteers collect sealed, signed ballots from voters and deliver them in bulk to state election officials, amounts to voter fraud. They have especially insisted on this after a North Carolina Republican campaign was caught in a criminal scheme to collect unsealed—and in some cases unfilled—voter ballots, then forging or altering those ballots to include votes for the Republican congressional candidate while discarding votes against him.
Given how insistent Republicans have been in not comprehending the difference between the legal and illegal versions of ballot collection in public, it may or may not be surprising to learn that, behind the scenes, Republicans are fuming about Democratic successes in California, one of the states where sealed ballot collection is legal, and promising to duplicate them. According to the Washington Post, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota told Republican donors, “While the Democrats had an operation on the ground that was actually doing the ballot harvesting, we did not have a corresponding organization that was doing that. That won’t happen again.”
The California Republican Party is at this point such a wreck that it now is third in popularity among California voters, running behind both Democrats and "no party preference." It will take a herculean effort to keep the state party from sliding even further into obsolescence, given its now-cemented reputation as the party of stubborn racism, so there's little doubt that remaining Republicans will fight to match every Democratic get-out-the-vote effort, not just this one.
While California has indeed legalized ballot collection, there are caveats. Volunteers cannot be paid based on the number of ballots they collect; the ballots must be sealed before collection; the collector's signature is required as well as the voter's; and ballots must be submitted within three days of collection. It is part of California's efforts to reduce barriers to voter participation by offering voters multiple ways to return their ballots, both ahead of and on election day. The most substantive of these is vote-by-mail; volunteer ballot collection is not likely to play more than an ancillary and likely dwindling role as Californians get used to being able to return ballots from any mailbox or post office.
Republicans would be foolish not to mount efforts to match Democrats’ approaches. That said, it remains a wee bit alarming that top Republican leaders genuinely seem to be baffled by the difference between this legal ballot collection and the flagrantly criminal North Carolina version. California Republican Congressman Mark Meadows has made a particular point of being theatrically obtuse on this, so it may be worthwhile for local campaign-watchers to keep an eye out for Republican volunteers that don't, ahem, have a full grasp of the rules they are required to abide by.