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Halloween, 2020

One Reason So Many People Are Voting

Because They Can!
By Miles Rapoport

The following is a guest edition of Unsanitized from Miles Rapoport, a
Prospect board member, Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy at
the Ash Center of the Kennedy School at Harvard, and Secretary of the
State of Connecticut from 1995-1999.

 

The line for early voting at a polling place wraps around Edmond Church
of Christ on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, in Edmond, Oklahoma. (Sue Ogrocki/AP
Photo)

Three days from Tuesday's moment in this election marathon, there is
plenty we don't know. As someone famously said, there are Known
Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns. We are all holding our collective breaths
for the outcomes, from the Presidency to control of state legislative
chambers, and for the resilience of our democratic process in general.

But one thing we can say with some confidence is that there will be a
record turnout in this election. As of this Friday evening, over
86,300,000 people have already voted.  This is measured against 137
million people who voted in 2016, and a Total Voting Eligible Population
of 239 million people, according to Professor Michael McDonald and the
U.S. Elections Project
. While it
is too early to say that this extraordinary early vote are new voters
and not just the same voters voting earlier, it seems clear that turnout
this year will almost certainly be over 150 million votes cast; it could
well go over 160 million.

There are lots of reasons for this, but I want to highlight one that is
not properly credited. So many people are voting early because people
have successfully fought to open the process of registration and voting
over the last twenty years, building off the trailblazing work of the
civil rights movement. Major expansions of opportunities for people to
register and vote were increasingly the norm before any of the
adjustments because of COVID-19.

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A full accounting would take far longer, but consider these comparisons,
first in voter registration options:
* In 2000, six states had Same Day Registration (SDR), which studies
have shown boosts turnout 5-7 percent. In 2020, 21 states and
Washington, D.C. are offering voters this chance.

* In 2002, Arizona became the first state to provide for online voter
registration; today it operates in 40 states.

* Only five years ago, no states had automatic voter registration (AVR),
which proactively and automatically registers people when they visit the
Department of Motor Vehicles and sometimes other agencies. Oregon was
the first adopter in 2016, and 16 states and DC now have the procedure
in place.

* Over the last twenty years, according to The Sentencing Project (which
has led the way on this issue), 24 states have made it more possible for
people with felony convictions to vote. There are still 5.2 million
people who are ineligible, but that is down from 6.1 million in
2016-despite efforts in Florida to throw roadblocks at the
implementation of Amendment 4 in restoring ex-felon voting rights, which
passed in 2018 with an overwhelming Yes vote.

* In 23 states, sixteen and/or seventeen year-olds can pre-register,
making high school registration efforts possible and effective.

**Read all of our Election 2020 news here**

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Even more striking than these registration actions: several additional
options for voters to actually cast their votes have opened up in the
last several years.  

* Early in-person voting has increased steadily and dramatically. In
2000, 29 states allowed people to vote early. This year, it is available
in 43 states along with Washington, D.C.  Early voting takes pressure
off the crushes of election day, but also allows far more people to vote
in person than a one-day Tuesday election day.  Of the 85 million
people who have voted so far, 31 million are early in-person votes.

* The expansion of voting by mail has been a huge development. While
court challenges by Republicans seeking to undermine mail-in voting have
dragged into the final week of the election, states have made
adjustments this year that have made this critical mechanism more
available, including twelve states that mailed applications to every
registered voter, and four-California, Nevada, New Jersey, and
Vermont-which mailed actual ballots to every registered voter. Even
before this year, five states-Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado,
California, and again the District of Columbia-were conducting their
elections almost entirely by mail.  The results have been high turnout
rates, efficient systems for tracking and counting, and, need we say it,
no discernible voting fraud.

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None of this is meant to breeze by, or minimize, the disgraceful
attempts by the Trump campaign, Republican parties in many states, and
some Republican legislatures to undermine voting options and hold down
the vote.  But it is important to note that there have been heroic
efforts by voting rights organizations to fight back against these
tactics, with significant (though not universal) success.

These democracy-expanding efforts have not just been defensive. The
gains in voting access catalogued here are the result of tenacious and
sustained efforts by organizations, who have made expanding voting
rights and improving our democracy the central focus of their efforts
since the 2000 election. They have been joined increasingly by labor
organizations, women's organizations, environmental organizations, and
gun safety advocates, all of whom have recognized that making our
democracy work better is critical to successful efforts on so many
issues. These efforts should not be overlooked, and are bearing fruit
today.

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What lessons are there here for future work?  The major implication is
to truly embrace the conclusion that these 'process reforms' really
matter. This was true in the 2018 elections, and it is already hugely
true in 2020. Working toward a fully inclusive democracy, with a level
playing field for all, will make government more responsive and help
restore a good share of lost faith in our system. And it will prevent
the still-present specter of minority rule from pulling the country
backward.

That said, there's more work to be done. If there is a Biden
administration and a Democratic House and Senate, the passage of the
Voting Rights Advancement Act and the adoption of the comprehensive
reforms represented in HR 1 should be at the top of the federal
legislative agenda.

Perhaps even more important, there will very likely be new opportunities
in states to pass innovative and expansive measures to encourage people
to vote. Some of those will be to make permanent the pandemic-induced
expansions from this year. Some will be to further expand voter
registration. And maybe a really bold state will adopt 'universal
civic duty voting', making the act of participation a required civic
duty for every citizen. It is a concept we have utilized for serving on
juries for many years, and which Australia has successfully used for 96
years-with participation rates consistently around 90 percent. If we
know that making the process more inclusive works, this could be a time
for thinking big about continuing to move that needle.

**Days Until the Election**

3.

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Check your inbox for our down-to-the-wire election coverage

Today I Learned

* A survey of ballot measures

nationwide, and when we should expect results
.
(FiveThirtyEight)

* An even more comprehensive elections tracker

from @Taniel. (What's on the Ballot)

* This appeals court order is an obvious attempt to steal the Minnesota
election
.
(The Week)

* Trump campaign targeting 2016 voters

who dropped off in 2018, but losing others in the process. (Wall Street
Journal)

* Great piece from Marcia Brown on the Pennsylvania Women for
Biden-Harris Facebook group
,
which has an astounding 124,000 members. (The American Prospect)

* Alarms sounding among some in the Biden camp on Black and Latino
turnout
.
(Bloomberg)

* The three states Trump's eyeing for post-election lawsuits

make up his hypothetical map: Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Nevada.
(Axios)

* John Cornyn has a resume inflation problem
.
(Salon)

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