Republicans have long claimed that ballot harvesting — when a third party collects completed ballots from voters and then delivers them in bulk to election officials — is ripe for fraud and have rejected it.

But California Republican Reps. Mike Garcia and Michelle Steele won earlier this month with the aid of successful ballot harvesting strategies used by their campaigns, arguing that it made no sense to reject the practice while allowing Democrats to take advantage of it. …

American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp also encouraged Republicans to engage in ballot harvesting where the practice is legal if that is the only way to defeat Democrats, saying “it’s kind of like a business that deals with a corrupt tax code. It can yell about the tax code … but in the end, it has to follow the tax code and take advantage of the tax code. And even businesses that take advantage of tax deductions they find abhorrent and immoral, but they still do it.”