Count on President Trump to say the quiet part out loud. Last week, the president joined Fox & Friends to attack failed efforts by Democrats to include vote-by-mail, among other election protection items, in the stimulus package.
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“The things they had in there were crazy,” he complained. “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
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It’s startling, and unseemly at best, to hear the leader of the world’s first constitutional democracy talk about widespread voting in such partisan fashion. Voting is how we keep ourselves a free nation governed by the rule of law. And due to the coronavirus, the only way to ensure that all Americans can vote safely in the November election is for states to give their citizens the option of voting by mail. Seventeen states, right now, lack that easy step. (Polling sites are needed too, as a necessary complement to mail ballots.)
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Republican leaders in Congress and Trump, however, are pushing back against this option. They argue fraudulent mailed-in ballots will contaminate the election. “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting,” Trump said last week during his nightly coronavirus briefing.
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He’s wrong, and security concerns can be easily addressed.
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States have multiple tools to ensure a secure vote. The first is the mail ballot envelope, where the voter must include private information and a signature to be matched against the voter rolls. Those envelopes should come with smart barcodes — think FedEx — to track an envelope during transit. If a voter says they never received the envelope, another can be sent to her and the original will be flagged as compromised and not counted. Many voters choose to drop off ballots at secure polling sites and government offices. States can also position secure drop boxes in accessible locations, watched over by security cameras when outside of government offices, to protect ballots from tampering. And post-election audits can identify any irregularities.
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But even if all 50 states have a vote-by-mail option ahead of the November election, polling locations must remain open. In-person voting is essential for many communities. Take Native Americans, for example. Many reservations do not have addresses recognized by the U.S. Postal Service and therefore residents must rely on P.O. boxes far from their homes for mail. Some voters also rely on assistance — whether it’s translation or specially designed machines for those with disabilities — to cast their ballots.
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Today, the Wisconsin vote is giving us a terrifying preview of what November could look like nationwide if vote-by-mail isn’t an option. Last night, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Gov. Tony Evers’s executive order to delay the state’s primary and local elections until June to protect Wisconsinites’ right to vote and their health. And now, in real time, we’re seeing how difficult it is to do in-person voting during a pandemic.
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Like the rest of the nation, the average age of Wisconsin’s poll workers is over 60. Considering the coronavirus hits this population hardest, the state has found it impossible to recruit enough poll workers on such a short timeline. In response, counties drastically cut back on polling locations. The result, according to news reports, is amusement park length lines at time when social distancing is critical to flattening the virus’s curve.
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Wisconsin must not be the harbinger of what’s to come in November. We have time and the plan ( laid out by the Brennan Center and supported by hundreds of civic and community organizations and over 1,000 political scientists) to make sure the 2020 election is free, fair, secure, and also safe. As my colleague Wendy Weiser told the Associated Press this morning, “Americans should not
have to choose between their health and their right to vote.” Since our founding, neither war nor pestilence has ever prevented Americans from voting. We cannot let the coronavirus break that streak.
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