The political world has been turned upside down by the outbreak of the
Coronavirus. Many states have postponed elections to reduce long lines at
the polls and to avoid infecting older people who make up a large portion
of poll workers. Nominees have canceled in-person rallies and the latest
primary debate give us one of the first glimpses into social distancing; w
ith podiums six feet apart and candidates elbow bumping.
We have to come up with American solutions that work for all voters because
we really should not see people having to wait for hours and hours and try
to vote and be corralled together if they're not supposed to be grouping
together and all those sorts of things.
As states and jurisdictions move elections later in the calendar and call
for voters to request absentee ballots, the country faces the possibility
of holding a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic.
We don't know what the future holds.
We don't know what things are going to look like in November, but if it's
possible, we're going to have anything like what we're seeing now, people
are going to be afraid to go to the polling places.
It's going to be hard to staff polling places and so we have a backstop.
So while the U.S.
grapples with the Coronavirus pandemic and maintaining democracy, can
Americans vote at home?
Can the U.S. vote by mail?
States run elections in the US and even counties within states have
different voting laws.
Elections in this country are not run at the federal level.
There is no federal agency like there are in other countries that
administer and run our elections.
This is done by state governments and in particular it's down by county
governments all over the country.
Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution gives the power to Congress to
overrule any state election laws, as to the time, place and manner for
holding federal elections.
It would take congressional legislation to change the date of an election.
On March 11, 2020, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Amy Klobuchar of
Minnesota introduced the "Resilient Elections During Quarantines and
Natural Disasters Act of 2020.
American voters are not going to be forced between choosing between their
health or voting.
A companion bill was introduced in the House by Representatives Earl
Blumenauer and Suzan DelBene of Washington.
58% of the poll workers in the 2018 election were 60 or over.
Exactly the target group that we don't want exposed to the virus.
This is no longer a good idea, it's imperative.
When states of emergency are declared by at least a quarter of the states
and commonwealths, the bill goes into effect.
States and election jurisdictions would then have 30 days to make
contingency plans public for elections up to 180 days after the bill is
ordained. States would have to enact no excuse absentee vote by mail.
States would also have to honor online requests for absentee ballots
received 5 days prior to Election Day, guarantee the counting of absentee
ballots postmarked or signed before the close of the polls on Election Day
and require states to offer downloadable and printable absentee ballots.
It's actually the same process that we already have in place for military
and overseas voters.
So it would now be some it could be applied to domestic voters as well.
Online voting only exists in a few states for overseas military personnel
and expats, while Utah allows it for people with disabilities.
One interesting feature of the bill is the provision that states provide
self sealing envelopes with prepaid postage for all voter registration and
absentee ballots, after Washington State cautioned against licking
envelopes. The government would support the effort to the tune of $500
million dollars in federal funds to help states implement these changes.
We're going to be spending several trillion dollars this year, so half a
billion, a billion dollars to spend to protect the integrity of the ballot
box is the bargain, is an absolute bargain.
But states rights activists are not onboard with the legislation.
There's no election official anywhere in the country that wouldn't say,
"Well, of course, you can vote by absentee ballot because of the
Coronavirus." So there's no need for this bill.
In the stimulus package signed by President Trump, $400 million were
earmarked for elections."
In a press call, Senator Amy Klobuchar stated:.
The money will come in a way that the states are used to.
They've got funding this way before from the Election Assistance
Commission and the funding, once people apply has to go out in 30 days.
The funding on a per capita basis, but each state will get at least $3
million and then the state has to match 20% within the first two years.
But the whole idea is to get the money out immediately.
Whatever the usual rules are, if we have anything like the situation we
have today, I think we're going to see a large uptick in both Democrats
and Republicans using vote-by-mail because people are going to want to
ensure they can vote and not worry about having to get to the polling
place. Every state has absentee voting.
In all, 34 states have some form of no excuse absentee voting, while 16
states require an excuse.
The National Vote at Home Institute breaks it down to five levels from
least to most restrictive.
Step 5 is the states that are mailing out a ballot to every voter
automatically, so those are states like Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah
and Hawaii all fall in that kind of step 5 category.
California is almost a step 5 and the reason I say that is they've
allotted their counties the ability to opt in to mail everyone a ballot.
This is something that the voters want.
This is the wave of the future.
Level 4 are states where voters can choose to permanently receive their
ballots in the mail.
That means that they just have to sign up once and say for all future
elections, I want to get a ballot mailed to me.
Level 3 are states that don't require an excuse, but voters have to ask for
an absentee ballot. A state like Florida, for instance, has a no excuse
absentee process and it's good for an entire two year election cycle
versus Georgia, where you have to sign up every election.
So it's burdensome not only to the voter, but also to the election
administrators, because they have to keep processing all of these requests
over and over. You know, you should have to request an absentee ballot
each time you vote, because otherwise, if states don't do good record
keeping on people who have moved out of state or who have died, those
absentee ballots will keep getting mailed.
Level 2 are states that require an excuse for anyone who is under a certain
age set by the state.
Texas, if you're over 65, you don't have to provide an excuse.
But if you're under 65 or 64 1/2 or what have you, you have to have an
excuse. Finally, level 1 are the states who require an excuse in order to
vote absentee.
Sometimes a notary is required even to sign for the absentee requests.
And frankly, in those states where there's been an excuse, it hasn't been
widely communicated to voters that they even have that option.
The earliest push for absentee voting in the United States was during the
Civil War. The idea was met with caution as states created provisions to
deal with concerns of fraud, privacy and coercion, many of the same
concerns some still have today.
Oregon was the first state to offer a universal vote by mail system.
Oregon started its experiment in 1981, but only in local elections that
counties could opt into.
In 1987, vote by mail was enacted statewide, but again only for local
elections. In January 1996, Oregon held the first federal election
entirely by mail, a special election for the Senate.
The battle was between Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden, who
won that election and still serves in the Senate.
Representative Earl Blumenauer, who represents the Portland area in
Congress, is a direct beneficiary of that historic election.
After Representative Wyden and won the special election, Blumenauer won
Wyden's congressional seat in the 3rd District, also entirely by mail.
And it was a resounding success.
It made an opportunity for people to have plenty of time to be able to
deal with the balloting.
It's secure.
It saved a lot of money because you didn't have to staff all those
individual polling places.
In 1998, a ballot initiative made Oregon the first state to conduct all
their elections by mailing ballots to every eligible voter.
In terms of costs, Representative Blumenauer suggests that Oregon has
saved millions. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars that are saved
and when you deal with over 20 years of general elections and special
elections, being able to simplify the process, it's tens of millions of
dollars. There are over 3,000 counties in the United States and with
so many laws regarding absentee voting, there are concerns about how
voting by mail can be implemented or whether it's even a good idea.
It's the kind of thing that you really need to leave to local election
officials because a one size policy from Washington doesn't work.
There are also concerns about voter fraud and coercion, tampering or
harvesting of ballots, disenfranchising citizens who are differently abled
or whose primary language is not English, as well as security issues that
may arise from provisions that would make ballots downloadable and
printable. But one of the biggest concerns about mail in voting is voting
too early. If you vote weeks before the election and your candidate either
drops out or during a general election, some big news, some kind of
information, some scandal comes out right before Election Day about the
candidate, you don't have the opportunity to change your vote.
That was definitely the case when we started in Oregon.
Lots of people rushed and if they had different feelings than people who
watched the campaign go forward.
But people learn pretty quickly.
And what we've seen in Oregon is that there are a number of people who
will hold the ballot to just get more information.
Another major concern is that voter rolls may not be up to date.
I went to a meeting of election officials in Oregon and one of the election
officials from another state leaned over to me and said, "Well, my
sister-in-law lives in Oregon and she voted three times in the last
election." And I said, why did she do that?
She said, "Well, she voted her ballot.
She voted her husband's ballot and then she voted another ballot because
she was registered under both her married name and her maiden name."
Voter registration rolls are in bad shape in many parts of the country and
if you go to an all mail system, particularly one where there simply
mailing of alit to everyone who's registered to vote, you are guaranteeing
that you're going to have problems.
But the National Vote at Home Institute says that tracking is getting
better. In the last five years, a lot of states have moved over to what's
called ERIC. That ERIC system basically allows states to leverage motor
vehicle data, national change of address data in conjunction with the
voter file and so we've been able to capture a lot more movement within
the voter file than what we used to be able to do maybe 10 years ago.
Ballot tampering and harvesting are another critical issue that could arise
from universal all mail voter.
One of the most recent examples of this was the 2018 congressional race
for North Carolina's 9th District.
North Carolina, for instance, didn't have pre-paid postage during that
election. They required voters to drop off their ballot at a specific
point at the county, so they had to be the county elections office.
They couldn't drop it off at any polling place and the problem with that
is when voters are in a pinch at the last minute and they have someone
knocking on their door saying, "Oh, I can take this in for you," and they
maybe don't have time to go 30 minutes over to the clerk's office, they're
going to offer that over.
With the 2020 presidential election looming and the country grappling with
the Coronavirus pandemic, experts are examining if the outbreak will
become the tipping point for voting at home in the US.
We need to have a way to make sure the people who are unable to get to the
polling places have a chance to vote.
And although vote by mail is not perfect and it's not going to help
everyone. It could potentially help to enfranchise millions of people and
keep them away from polling places where they might be deterred from going
because of the virus.