MILES PARKS: As public gatherings of all kinds continue to be postponed or reimagined due to COVID-19,
people are beginning to wonder what might happen with another major event this fall:
the presidential election.
We've got answers to four big questions
you may be asking about
how to vote during a pandemic.
Question No. 1: Why can't we vote online?
So, there are a couple reasons why we can't vote over the internet,
but the biggest reason is security.
The internet is inherently vulnerable.
Now, you might be thinking: 'I bank, I shop over the internet. Why can't I vote online?'
Well, security experts say voting is a much harder problem to solve than both of those things
because banks can bake in fraud to their cost of doing business.
They eat millions of dollars every year, and just recoup it in fees.
Elections can't work that way.
The biggest problem is that people's confidence in our federal elections has been trending downward.
A group of political scientists found that over the past two decades
people's faith that the national vote tally is counted accurately has been cut in half.
Moving the process online could also make people more skeptical of the results.
If the country went digital, it would open itself up to accusations of hacking or malfunctions
even if things go well.
At some point in the future, we may have an internet voting option, just not in 2020.
America does have another option though: vote by mail.
Which brings us to our second question.
LISTENER:Is there any work being done on a national mail-in voting plan, or is it being left to the states?
Like all other voting issues, this one is being left to the states and local jurisdictions to figure out.
Currently, all states provide some means for voters to request a ballot by mail.
There are even five states that conduct their elections entirely by mail.
In these states, every registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot.
However, many states have made it easier to vote by mail in response to the pandemic.
Some states may mail ballots to every registered voter.
Some may send absentee ballot request forms to every voter
and ask them to send it back before sending them a ballot.
And some may just relax some restrictions on who's able to vote by mail.
However, there are two major barriers to the vote by mail option.
The first is logistical.
Some states are set up to mail out and count only 5 or 10% of their ballots.
It's not as easy as flipping a switch.
You need to buy a lot more paper, buy new scanners, update the address information for all of your voters,
and then you need to educate those voters on the new ways to vote.
Even if you do pass all of those logistical hurdles, the second hurdle to vote by mail is political.
Voting by mail has only just recently become a partisan issue
but measures that make voting easier have been partisan for decades now.
Republicans have long been using the argument of voter fraud
to crack down on many policies that make voting easier.
STEPHEN MILLER: Voter fraud is a serious problem in this country.
KRIS KOBACH: There's another big issue that
President Trump and I have both been concerned about:
voter fraud.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: It shouldn't be mail-in voting.
It should be, you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself.
You don't send it in the mail
where people pick up all sorts of bad things can happen.
PARKS: They've really jumped on this because fraud is slightly more prevalent with mail ballots
than with in-person voting.
But experts say the chance of fraud is still minuscule, and it's not statistically relevant.
Both parties have long believed that easier voting measures will benefit Democrats,
but a new academic study disputes this.
This study done by Stanford University found no partisan effect of implementing vote by mail.
And recent polls show support for it from Republicans and Democrats.
In fact, a recent Pew Research Center poll showed that
87% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans are in favor of allowing any voter to vote by mail.
So, if most people are in favor of voting by mail, it's up to the government to change the election system.
Which takes us to our third question: who can change voting laws during a crisis?
It's important to remember that almost everything related to elections is governed by the states
and not the federal government.
This means there are really 50 different answers to this question depending on the different state laws.
When it comes to election emergencies,
some state election officials can change local election dates and adjust the locations of polling places.
Other state election officials can only delay election dates,
and in some states, election officials can only relocate polling places.
In general, it's a lot easier to make drastic changes to local and state elections.
Elections were delayed in Louisiana because of Hurricane Katrina.
And in 2001, elections were postponed in New York after the terrorist attacks of 9/11,
but during the last real national pandemic emergency, the Spanish flu in 1918, voting went forward.
Right now, states are trying to make big changes to their election system,
but any time rules are changing this quickly, they will also be subject to court challenges.
As courts start playing a role in adjusting voting laws, political parties are stocking up cash
to fight these legal battles, and try to scrape for every rule change that can help their party.
But even if states do make changes to their voting laws,
many people are wondering if Election Day itself can be changed.
Which takes us to our fourth and last question:
With the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 coming in the fall,
there's been talk of delaying the presidential election in November.
Is there any actual constitutional or legal pathway for this to happen?
In short, it's really difficult.
A president can't cancel or delay an election using executive authority.
The November general election date is set by a federal law
that was enacted and approved by Congress in 1845.
To change it would mean introducing legislation that's approved by both houses of Congress
signed by the President,
and still stands after being subject to rigorous challenges in the courts.
In other words, the government would have to make a bipartisan agreement.
In other, other words, it's not gonna happen.
Even if you could change the election date,
experts say it's not clear that you can pick one in the near future that would work.
During a pandemic, a problem might actually be worse in a week or two weeks or a month.
And the Constitution mandates that the new Congress must be sworn in on Jan. 3rd,
and the new president's term must begin on Jan. 20th.
So, this year's election will happen as scheduled, just maybe not as planned.