Elections are about choice. At a basic level, a choice between the Democratic or Republican parties, one candidate or the other. But there are many barriers people face that add another layer of choice. Have to work on election day? It’s a choice between your income or your vote.
This year, voters face a new choice. As the Covid-19 pandemic forces social distancing, in-person voting is a health risk. The question becomes: Your vote or your life?
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Before this pandemic interrupted life and disrupted the presidential primary, several states were already making efforts to improve voter accessibility by expanding voting options. Now, the coronavirus has forced a test case to see if options like early voting and mail-in ballots can be feasible and efficient on a national scale.
The pandemic scrambled primaries in more than a dozen states, including New York, which canceled that election. It showed that most states don’t have a plan B for election emergencies like natural disasters, cyberattacks, or pandemics.
The last time a pandemic disrupted a national election was when the Spanish flu hit in 1918. Woodrow Wilson was president, and the United States was in the home stretch of World War I. Public health officials recommended social distancing and quarantining, forcing candidates to cancel in-person events and rallies. While the candidates of today can still be visible on social media, YouTube, and broadcast television, back then they rushed to put out newspaper ads and send literature in the mail.
Turnout was around 40%, down 10% from the previous midterm elections. There may have been other factors to blame for the low turnout, as half the voting-age men were fighting overseas, and women and racial minorities were unable to vote in most states. At the time, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that it was “the first masked ballot ever known in the history of America.”
During a pandemic, in-person polling locations put voters and volunteers at great risk. People in many places already face long, slow lines when voting. With social distancing requirements, there would be fewer machines, and each machine would need to be disinfected after each use. And with people in the queues standing six feet apart, the lines will be longer and voting will take more time.
Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, told the New York Times that he is urging states to expand the use of vote-by-mail, no-excuse absentee voting, curbside ballot drop-off, and early voting. Already, California is one of the first states to decide to send all registered voters their ballots ahead of the general election.
“Elections and the right to vote are foundational to our democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement on the California government website. “No Californian should be forced to risk their health in order to exercise their right to vote.”
It will be easy for California to adapt because of a state law passed four years ago called the Voter’s Choice Act. It promised to “modernize elections” by allowing counties to provide greater flexibility and convenience for voters. Counties have the choice to enact a new election model that expands in-person early voting and mails ballots to every registered voter. Currently 15 counties operate under this new model, including Los Angeles County, although it is the only participating county that does not mail every ballot.
For the first time on Super Tuesday, local voting locations were busy throughout the day. California voters were able to cast ballots at any precinct location in the county, not just the one in the district where they are registered. This means people could vote near work instead of waiting until after work and risk not arriving before the centers close.
“You’re not restricted. You don’t have to wait. You don’t have to go to your specific precinct. You can go to any center you want to go to,” said Fred Thomas III, a precinct volunteer in Los Angeles County. “Not only that, you can go more than one day. So that’s a huge improvement.”
Voters could also use Poll Pass, an app that helps voters scan their preselected ballots at the voting machines.
“You don’t have to be a geek. It’s just a matter of do you want to be efficient or not efficient? And a lot of people want to be efficient,” Thomas said.
Voters could also use Poll Pass for up-to-date information about registration and to view the Twitter feed of Dean Logan from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk office. He’s responsible for registering voters, maintaining voter files, and administering federal, state, local, and special elections.
Amid the coronavirus, mechanisms like the Poll Pass app may be the answer to safely conducting elections. Voters can receive information as it rapidly updates, and scanning a virtual, preselected ballot eliminates potentially harmful contact with voting machines.
Super Tuesday saw the most ballots ever cast in the state and the second-highest turnout among eligible voters in the past 40 years, behind only the 2008 election, according to Sam Mahood from the office of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. The percentage of registered voters also increased from 72% in 2016 to 82% in 2020.
While this is a great sign for increased turnout, Mahood said he would like to see the entire state operate under the Voter’s Choice Act model. However, California’s size and diversity in geography and demographics make that a challenge, as each of its 58 counties is responsible for administering its own elections.
California hopes to safely keep in-person voting options open this fall to accommodate same-day voter registration changes, people who lost mail-in ballots, people who require language assistance, and voters with disabilities.
“We need to work to maintain as many in-person voting options as possible that are going to be safe for voters and safe for poll workers and election personnel,” Mahood said.
Newsom previously ordered the May 12 special election to be conducted with mail-in ballots to serve as a mini-experiment to inform how decisions are made heading into the general election in the fall.
While major adjustments will be made, Mahood is optimistic.
“Luckily, California is in a relatively good place, because 75% of voters in the March primary already received their ballot by mail. So, ramping up to vote by mail in California, I think we’re in a much better place to ramp that number up higher, because we already have such a widespread vote-by-mail usage.”
The biggest challenge, Mahood said, will come with educating voters who are unfamiliar with the process and taking time to count the increased volume of ballots on the back end. But above all, the state’s primary concern is safety. The goal, he said, is that “no one’s forced to choose between their health and their voting rights.”
Padilla is also using this time to work with other state leaders to make voting easy and accessible during this pandemic. He spoke with states with the highest usage of mail-in ballots in the country, such as Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Colorado, and gave advice of his own as someone with experience dealing with high volumes of ballots.
Ultimately, California officials hope that vote-by-mail ballots will become the national standard.
Arizona Secretary of State Kate Hobbs, a Democrat, is fighting with lawmakers about the best way forward. She called for all mail-in ballots for the state’s presidential-preference election in mid-March as the coronavirus began to spread rapidly.
In a letter to legislative leaders before the election, Hobbs called for more flexibility in the law to allow election officials to adapt to the circumstances of the pandemic in order to “protect voters’ health while preserving the ability to exercise their right to vote.”
“Secretary Hobbs is a firm believer that any opportunity that we can take to expand the franchise to eligible voters, we should look at, in this particular case in light of coronavirus,” said C. Murphy Herbert, a spokesperson for Hobbs’ office. “She is asking the legislature to expand the authority that the counties have to offer all-mail elections for state and federal elections… [B]ut in light of the rapidly developing situation with coronavirus, it seems like making sure that folks have more options available in the coming months would make things safer and add some certainty to our process.”
A proposal dubbed Senate Bill 1077 aims to give counties the choice to hold elections by mail if approved by the local board of supervisors and if more than 60% of voters in the county already signed up to receive ballots by mail. The bill is currently is still pending in the legislature.
Republican lawmakers opposed to the legislation argue that moving to all mail-in ballot elections for the primary in August and the general election in November would not be feasible, given the amount of logistical work to be done in a short time. However, Herbert said her boss believes Arizona is well suited to move forward with the mail-in option.
March’s election had a similar turnout to 2016, around 49%. Eighty percent of voters who participated did so before election day.
Herbert credits the relatively high turnout to the state’s robust early voting and ballot-by-mail program. The state’s permanent early voting list automatically mails ballots for each election to eligible voters.
One challenge to mail-in ballots is accommodating Arizona’s large indigenous Navajo population. Many of the 22 federally recognized Native American tribes in the state live on rural reservation lands with unreliable mail services.
“It makes an all mail-in election difficult there,” Herbert said, so the office is talking with the nations to recognize and account for that concern.
The rules for who is allowed to submit an absentee or mail-in ballots are outlined in most state constitutions. In Connecticut, Secretary of State Denise Merrill plans to use the financial assistance from the federal government to protect voters and poll workers to send each voter an absentee ballot application in time for August’s primary and November’s general election. But first, she is hoping to expand the interpretation of the absentee ballot rules to aid in the pandemic.
The state’s tight rules allow voters to use an absentee ballot only in the case of absence from the city or town where they are inhabitants, or because of sickness or physical disability, or if the tenets of their religion forbid secular activity. Lawmakers have interpreted this narrowly to apply only to an individual’s illness.
“It is within my office’s authority… to interpret the statute,” Merrill, a Democrat, said in a virtual press conference on May 4. “I am completely sympathetic to the issues that people have. I think it’s unconscionable that we would make people decide their health versus their vote.”
Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont also favors an expansive view of the sickness requirement. He can change the law for the August primary, but not for the November election, because his powers during the six-month emergency period he declared will expire in September.
Similar to Arizona, Republican lawmakers in Connecticut are wary of the proposed expansion. State GOP chair J.R. Romana was quoted in the Connecticut Mirror that he does not oppose the “modest change” sought by Merrill, so long as it comes with stricter rules to ensure voter rolls stay up to date to prevent voter fraud.
While the risk for human error and fraud is real, not expanding voting through mail ballots could exclude large swaths of the population from participating in elections.
“If we don’t make accommodations for increased vote-by-mail, I think there is a special burden that’s going to be placed on older voters, who are most susceptible to having serious complications if they get this virus,” Rick Hasen, an election law experts and political science professor at UC Irvine, said in an interview with ProPublica. “I think that the most important thing right now is for election officials to think about those vulnerable populations and ask what they can do to ensure that they’re not disenfranchised.”
Hasen recommends Congress pass a law requiring states that don’t currently offer no-excuse vote by mail to offer the option and provide funding to accommodate the expensive process of counting ballots while understaffed during the pandemic. “I think that is something that is doable so long as there’s enough planning and resources and we start thinking about it now.”
