WASHINGTON — If the coronavirus pandemic continues to make in-person voting virtually impossible by November, conducting the 2020 presidential election largely by mail isn't out of the question.Advocates say a massive expansion of vote-by-mail is technically feasible, but may require more time, money and political willpower than is available, with the $400 million included in Congress' new stimulus bill just beginning of the need."In my view, with the right leadership and with the right amount of funding by the federal government, most states would be able to go to a vote-by-mail system for November — if we begin planning now,” said Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan, where vote-by-mail has exploded in popularity since voters there approved a referendum in 2018 to allow anyone to request a mail-in absentee ballot."In this extraordinary, unprecedented moment, there is an opportunity," Benson added.The simplest solution might be for states to utilize current laws to dramatically expand mail voting by, for instance, mailing every voter an absentee ballot request form and a postage-paid return envelope.That's what the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, where just 5 percent of voters cast their ballot by mail in the last two elections, plans to do ahead of his state's postponed May 19 primary, taking the unprecedented step of sending absentee ballot requests forms to an estimated 6.9 million people.Nevada, another battleground state with, and Rhode Island have already moved to conduct their rescheduled June primaries almost entirely by mail, while Ohio's GOP governor and secretary of state want to implement a postage-paid vote-by-mail election ahead of their state's rescheduled June 2 primary. Maryland and New Jersey, meanwhile, plan to hold upcoming down-ballot elections scheduled throughout the next three months, entirely by mail, and which could help pave the way for November.West Virginia has added fear of the coronavirus as a valid excuse to vote absentee, while Indiana temporarily suspended the state's absentee voting requirements, allowing anyone to cast a ballot by mail in their primary.Every state that isn't used to voting primarily by mail will have to prepare for massively increased volume, said Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington.Washington has been conducting elections entirely by mail for several years, including its recent Democratic presidential primary election held on March 10 while the state was rocked by pandemic.Wyman said she's been inundated with calls from colleagues in other states seeking advice."It started about 2 weeks ago, when states started realizing that the sheer volume of people it's going to take to stand up an election is going to be very difficult amidst this outbreak," she said."The first thing I say is people need to understand the context," she said. "I am probably the biggest champion of vote by mail in the country, but it took us five years to move from polling places to vote-by-mail."Voters need to be told not only how to vote, but to expect that election nights— including the big one in November — could feel completely unlike anything they're used to.Mailed ballots typically take much longer to count because, among other reasons, of the security measures needed to verify them without the voter present (it took almost a week for NBC News and other outlets to declare a winner in Washington, for instance)."You’re going to need days, maybe weeks to process elections after a high-turnout election to process results," Wyman said. Counties in Washington have 20 days to finalize results and "they use every one of those days in our state," she added.While voters and poll workers might be safe from the coronavirus if they can cast a ballot by mail, centralized ballot processing facilities could grind the count to a halt if one worker tests positive. And the system would depend on the U.S. Postal Service, which is under its own strains.Critics on the right raise concerns about ballot security and voter fraud, warning it's more difficult to verify identity without voters showing up in person (most vote-by-mail systems depend on signature matching for security). And critics say mailed ballots create opportunities for bad actors to tamper with or destroy ballots before they're returned, or for people to coerce others to vote a certain way.Civil rights advocates, too, while intrigued by the power of sending every voter a ballot, warn that moving the process beyond the watchful eye of poll workers can create opportunities for discrimination and coercion, for instance by domineering spouses or employers."I am deeply concerned about unchecked mass vote-by-mail in November if we're not mindful of the kinds of discrimination that we’ve seen in the past," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.For instance, the group took Gwinnett County, Georgia, to court during the 2018 election when it discovered that absentee ballots were being rejected at much higher rates for black voters than white voters, Clarke said.Voting at home can also be a challenge for non-English speakers or people who need help properly navigating the ballot, as well as for Native Americans living on reservations who don't have addresses.And for some voters, such older African-Americans who remember a time before the Civil Rights movement, it can be difficult to trust that a ballot dropped in a mailbox will really be counted."I think it’s important that we work to get vote by mail right," Clarke said. "We will have to invest a lot of effort in educating voters to make them trust the system."No matter what, the 2020 election will likely be a watershed moment in voting-by-mail. The practice was already on the rise and fears of the coronavirus are now pushing even more voters to take advantage of current laws, let alone expanded ones, which could overwhelm officials if they don't prepare.In Wisconsin, for instance, which has resisted rescheduling its April 7 primary, election clerks report a shortage of envelopes due to a spike in demand for absentee ballots. As of Friday, some 380,000 Wisconsinites had requested absentee ballots — way up from the nearly 250,000 who asked for one during the 2016 presidential election."We're telling people that you’re going to see a surge in mail-ballots no matter what, so you need to prepare for it," said Audrey Kline, the policy director of the National Vote at Home Institute. "We're just trying to help states prepare for what we see as the coming tidal wave."
Source : aol.com/news
Source : aol.com/news