Election officials from both parties are already sounding the alarm about the need for more resources to ensure health safety and expand alternatives to in-person and day-of voting. They also anticipate protracted partisan fights over what the general election could and should look like in the age of Coronavirus.
“We cannot let our Democracy be causality of the current health pandemic. We cannot wait until October to gear up for alternative methods to vote. We have to get ahead of it, we have to start now,” said Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state. “There is an urgency here.”
Tammy Jones, president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, wrote a letter to Governor Ron DeSantis this week raising concern about preparations. “We anticipate a significant statewide shortage of poll workers for the 2020 elections,” she wrote. “Alternatives or additional voting methods must be made available to counties.” And officials in red states like Louisiana are urging Congress to push legislation that would provide additional funding to states to carry out the elections safely in November. Polling shows that voters are also thinking ahead about the impact the virus could have on elections. A new Reuters/Ipsos survey found 72% of all U.S. adults support requirements for mail-in ballots as a way to protect voters should the virus continue to spread, including 79% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans. The concept of mail-in voting is at the forefront of the debate over how to proceed with November’s election. Four states already conduct their general elections by mail, and Hawaii is set to become the fifth state to move entirely to vote-by-mail with elections this year. Another 28 states and Washington D.C. offer “no-excuse” absentee or mail voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Now, Democrats are pushing for it to be implemented nationwide. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden have introduced legislation to “ensure that voters in all states have 20 days of early in-person voting and no-excuse absentee vote-by-mail.” The senators have been collaborating with a bipartisan group of secretaries of state across the country and acknowledge that the more likely reality is a hybrid system of expanded mail-in voting and early opportunities in addition to in-person voting on Election Day. “We are not reinventing the wheel here. This is upscaling what is already taking place,” Wyden told reporters on Thursday. “The goal to us from a public health standpoint became clear: minimize exposure at polling places and maximize vote by mail,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, noting that those goals “come with steep, steep price tags.” The newly passed stimulus package allocated $400 million to help secure elections, but Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing for additional funds. The Brennan Center estimates that ensuring a vote-by-mail option in all states would cost at least $1.4 billion, which would include ballot printing, postage costs, dropbox security, ballot tracking and processing, staffing, and additional technology. The center also estimates another $270 million would be necessary to ensure the safety of in-person voting and expand early voting. Padilla, who also heads the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said most states have some capacity for vote-by-mail elections. “It is a matter of ramping up that capacity, not experimenting with an untested tool,” he said, adding it will take political will and resources to do so. But if Wisconsin’s election is any indication, the political willpower isn’t easy to come by. The state has no-excuse absentee voting, and a record number of people requested ballots, but some voters still went to the polls on Tuesday in the middle of a global pandemic, despite several legal challenges and some political Hail Marys. The GOP-controlled Wisconsin legislature didn’t consider requests from Democratic Governor Tony Evers to first send every registered voter an absentee ballot and, a week later, to conduct the election primarily by mail voting with a May deadline, the first time Evers suggested moving the date of the election. On Monday, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court shot down a last-ditch attempt by Evers to suspend in-person voting until June, and the United States Supreme Court curtailed a lower court’s decision to extend the deadline for returning absentee ballots, after the Republican National Committee, Wisconsin Republican Party and Wisconsin Legislature challenged that ruling. At the national level, President Trump is leading the charge against expanded vote by mail. “People cheat,” Trump said at his daily briefing on Tuesday, though he, too, voted absentee by mail in Florida’s primary last month. “The mail ballots are corrupt in my opinion. They collect them, go out and get people to sign them, forgeries in many cases.” Mr. Trump argued that his Florida vote last month was different because he was out of the state on Election Day. The Republican National Committee and the Trump re-election campaign have been pushing back against efforts for a widespread vote-by-mail system. “Democrats couldn’t even make a vote counting app work in Iowa and now they suddenly believe they can redesign the entire U.S. election system,” said Justin Clark, the campaign’s senior counsel.