Elections Aren't Immune: Where's The Plan To Ensure COVID-19 Doesn't Upend 2020 Elections?
'Our Elections Are Not Immune. Wheres the plan to ensure that the coronavirus doesnt upend the 2020 elections? By John Nichols, The Nation, March 7, 2020. Excerpts:
The headline at the top of the front page of The Oakland Tribune on November 2, 1918, reassured Californians on the eve of that years statewide and congressional elections: voting safe if you wear your mask. Voters are receiving assurances from state and local health authorities that there is no danger of contracting the influenza by going to the polls on Tuesday, the story explained. Inquiries about the safety of heading to a crowded hall to cast a ballot were understandable. The other page-one headline read death toll from flu 39 in 24 hours. Across the country, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin carried a story on how the flu had hit election systems as voting day approached and letters sent to poll workers were returning with the word deceased written on the envelope...
Disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics have always raised election issues. Some of those issues involve parties and candidates, as we are reminded by President Trumps bizarre responses to the coronavirus outbreakwhich have ranged from wild changes that Washington Democrats are trying to politicize the coronavirus to his rambling suggestion that those who pursued impeachment and removal (what he calls the impeachment hoax) are now trying to score political points by discrediting his response. "Think of it. Think of it, the president told a South Carolina rally last week. And this is their new hoax. Weeks ago, a Daily Beast headline read, Donald Trump Campaign Fears Coronavirus Will Hurt His Re-Election Bid, and after days of stock market turbulence, CNN Business published, Coronavirus could cost Trump the election, Goldman Sachs warns.
- Poll workers assist voters with completing their ballots in Glendale, California on Super Tuesday, March 2020.
As we get reports of a rising death toll, new cases in new places, and closures of facilities such as the University of Washington in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease, our attention must move beyond matters of political positioning and calculation to the question of whether the voting process itself might be threatened. This is about more than the coronavirus. This is about how a country with uneven and frequently dysfunctional voting systems should prepare for a crisis that might demand emergency responses to maintain a fully functioning and reliable democracy. Advance planning gives election officials options when dealing with callsby sincere health administrators or self-serving politiciansfor the postponement of voting. Postponements have happened in the not-so-distant past: New York Citys Democratic mayoral primary was halted after voting had already begun on September 11, 2001, and a New Orleans mayoral election that was scheduled for shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
In the midst of man-made or natural disasters, it may be that a brief postponement is required to avoid extreme low turnout. In the case of a contagious disease threat, a fallback plan for voting by mail or through other strategies is the preferred and possible response. But to get things right, protocols and plans must be in place before a threat becomes a crisis...Super Tuesday voting saw reactions to the coronavirus by state and local election officials in communities where cases have been confirmed. For instance, Eric Kurhi, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County, California, Registrar of Voters, announced that his agency was providing each vote center with hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes to use on the touch screen machines that we have. Following the public health recommendations, we will urge people who feel sick to take the opportunity to mail in their ballot or drop it off at one of our many drop boxes. But we do not anticipate this will affect vote center operations. Super Tuesday passed with only the usual problemsBut what about next week? And the week after that, as more states hold more primaries and caucuses?..What about the November election?...
More, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-elections/
appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)EarthFirst
(2,877 posts)Im not real confident.
SmartVoter22
(639 posts)Voting at home, which almost every state offers, allows voters to get a ballot, by mail weeks before election day. I'ts pre-paid for the USPS mail return, too.
This option is the best for all voters. Here's a few reasons;
1) Tuesday Sucks. People are busy on average Tuesdays, work, kids, errands all use up most of the voting hours available. With Congress not thinking and making election days a national holiday and weekend voting, this will always be a problem.
2) Time to research candidates in down-ballot offices. People often vote as a guess, on less important offices. Voting at Home allows you weeks to research and pick candidates that actually reflect your issues and values.
3) It provides voters a wider time frame to cast their ballot.
Getting an absentee ballot is easy...call your local city, town or village clerk and ask for one.
and for the crazy voters
4) Paranoid Voters: These folks can get the ballot mailed to them, and if they think the USPS is shredding them and replacing them with fake ballots, they can take any ballot directly to their municipal clerk's offices and turn it in. we certainly don't want your vote being cast by Kenyans, George Soros or Ukrainians. But these voters are really not going to swing any election, are they...