No, Republicans didn't lose in California because of ballot harvesting. But the practice is concerning

Rather than take responsibility for their losses, Republicans have seized on a new state law that allows third parties to collect and turn in other people’s mail ballots to explain why they were so badly defeated in California races on Nov. 6.

According to the conspiracy theories being spouted by Republican leaders and then repeated in the internet echo chamber, the new law allowed Democrats to steal GOP seats in Orange County by sending campaign workers door to door, collecting thousands of mail ballots from guileless voters and doing who knows what to the ballots before handing them over — or not handing them over — to campaign officials.

It’s rubbish, of course. There’s no evidence that the ballot collection law was misused, even in the few reported cases when people turned in dozens of collected ballots. (Indeed, GOP campaigners employed the same tactic, just not as well, evidently.) Republicans are just looking for an excuse to explain their embarrassing election day drubbing.

But — and this is an important but — the Democrats set themselves up for exactly these kinds of allegations when they passed what really is an overly-permissive ballot collection law. It was written without sufficient safeguards, and suspicions of abuse were inevitable.