National: How Will We Vote? Outbreak Revives Debate on Mail-In Ballots | Nicholas Riccardi and Rachel La Corte/Associated Press

As the coronavirus pandemic knocks primary election after primary election off schedule, Democrats argue the outbreak shows the country needs to move toward one of their longtime goals — widespread voting by mail — to protect the November election. But Democrats’ hopes for using the crisis to expand voting by mail face firm Republican opposition, as well as significant logistical challenges. In some states, it would amount to a major revamp of their voting system just eight months before an election. Vote-by-mail boosters already lost the first round of the fight. Democrats tried and failed to insert a broad mandate expanding voting by mail in the stimulus bill, a proposal that could cost as much as $2 billion. Instead, the bill included $400 million to help states adjust elections however they see fit before November. But Democrats in Washington say they will keep pressing the issue, pointing to the increasing number of states that are shifting to mail-in voting for primaries as evidence that the time is right. A poll from the Pew Research Center released Monday found that about two-thirds of Americans would be uncomfortable voting at polling places during the outbreak. “Practically every single Tuesday, we see another state reacting to their inability to run their election in the middle of this incredible health care pandemic,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the first state to vote entirely through the mail. He called expanded mail voting “not even a close call.” Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, joined the push Sunday. “We should be looking to all-mail ballots across the board,” Biden said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We should be beginning to plan that in each of our states.”

National: Voting security guidelines get Election Assistance Commission attention | Tim Starks/Politico

New federal voting system guidelines prohibiting internet and wireless connectivity received significant attention on Friday when members of an Election Assistance Commission advisory group explained the broad suite of new guidelines to EAC commissioners and the public during a virtual meeting. If approved, version 2.0 of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines will require voting machines and ballot scanners to be air-gapped from networked devices, such as e-poll books that access voter registration databases. The new VVSG would also require physical connections instead of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for peripherals such as keyboards and audio headsets. The internet and wireless bans “are logical and make sense and definitely could be [accomplished by] election officials,” said Orange County, Calif., elections supervisor Neal Kelley, a member of the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee. Asked by EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer whether the bans were feasible, Kelley said Orange County and other jurisdictions already use air gaps. The requirements should not “be onerous in any way,” he said. The NIST staffers who wrote the VVSG provisions “had many discussions surrounding this issue,” said Mary Brady, the head of NIST’s voting system program. Staffers talked to vendors about “what they thought might be workable,” she told Palmer. They also reassured election officials that simple workarounds existed for their most common networking use cases.

National: Coronavirus upends US election cycle as officials scramble to protect voters | Joan E Greve/The Guardian

When Spelman College announced this month it was suspending in-person classes and closing residence halls in response to coronavirus, Ashee Groce, a junior, had a question: how would she vote? Groce, who serves as president of Young Democrats of America at Spelman, had registered herself and a number of fellow students in the Atlanta area. But they had now lost their housing and would have to return home before Georgia’s presidential primary. On a press call for the not-for-profit Rock the Vote, Groce said she was grateful Georgia was one of the states that have delayed their primaries, giving her more time to figure out how to cast a ballot, but those decisions have sparked their own set of concerns. As the coronavirus outbreak spreads across America, it is wreaking havoc in an election year as Democrats pick a champion to try to oust Donald Trump from the White House. But at least 15 Democratic primaries have now been delayed because of coronavirus, essentially freezing the Democratic nominating contest – currently dominated by the former vice-president Joe Biden. While state officials scramble to find safe ways for voters to cast their ballots, voting rights advocates warn that lawmakers will have to do considerable work to ensure the pandemic does not derail the presidential election.

National: Experts are warning coronavirus puts integrity the election at risk. Here’s what could happen come November. | Marshall Cohen and Kelly Mena/CNN

As states scramble to delay their spring primaries, election professionals and voting experts are anxiously looking ahead to November and warning that the coronavirus pandemic is already threatening the safety and integrity of the next presidential election. These experts are raising the alarm that the virus poses unprecedented challenges to the 2020 election, and that time is running out to prevent a disaster at the polls. President Donald Trump will square off against likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden in what is shaping up to be a tight race, where small tweaks to voting rules could tip the scales or trigger a constitutional crisis. The Trump administration is planning for a pandemic with multiple waves of illness that are expected to stretch into next year, according to an internal government report obtained by CNN. That means sweeping changes will be necessary in all 50 states to pull off the first pandemic-plagued presidential election in American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen state officials, former federal officials, voting rights activists and legal scholars.

National: How to Get Ahead of Election 2020 Security Threats | Tom Guarente/StateTech Magazine

With the first waves of 2020 election primaries behind us, state officials continue to face the question of whether their election systems are prepared for looming cybersecurity threats. Foreign threat actors have shown again and again their interest in undermining one of the most sacred rights Americans hold: the vote. In Florida, it’s been reported, Russian interference in voter roll systems had the potential to alter results during the 2016 midterm elections. In Illinois, media reports show,  there’s evidence that hackers working for Russian military intelligence installed malware on the network of a voter registration technology vendor that year. In fact, all 50 states’ election systems were targeted by Russia in 2016, according to a July 2019 report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Security experts have seen a number of potential threats to the 2020 elections, namely a significant increase in ransomware attacks, continued disinformation campaigns and more aggressive nation-state attacks within regions outside the United States.

Editorials: What Happens in November if One Side Doesn’t Accept the Election Results? How the coronavirus could contribute to a 2020 election meltdown. Richard L. Hasen/Slate

The November 2020 presidential election won’t be run perfectly—we have never had a perfect election conducted in this country or elsewhere—but the unique challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic add special stress to what was already going to be a difficult election and underline the need to ensure that it is run in a way that maximizes both voter access and integrity. Even before the current crisis, I had been deeply concerned about the chances of a 2020 “election meltdown,” in which the 47 percent or more of the population on the losing side would not accept the results as legitimate. I am even more worried now because of the changes and shortcuts that will be necessary to successfully run November’s tally amid a pandemic. Here is what we need to do to minimize the chances of a November meltdown.

Arkansas: Judge rejects absentee-ballot extension for runoff | Linda Satter/Arkansas Democrat Gazette

A federal judge on Monday evening denied a last-minute request to allow absentee ballots for today’s runoff elections to be counted as long as they are postmarked by today and received within 10 days. In denying a temporary restraining order requested Friday by the nonprofit Christian Ministerial Alliance, citing voting difficulties caused by the covid-19 pandemic, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. noted Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s March 20 executive order suspending some election laws. The order was issued “to aid County officials and County Board of Election Commissioners to carry out their duties in respect to the March 31, 2020 election deadlines.” It allowed eligible voters to request absentee ballots from their counties of residence and for the ballots to be sent if the applications were received within seven days of Election Day. “The effect of this Executive Order is to allow anyone to request an absentee ballot, regardless of whether they are unavoidably absent or unable to attend, and to allow them to request the absentee ballot by mail within seven days of an election,” Moody said.

Florida: Voter registration system experiences ‘intermittent issues’ | Allison Ross/Tampa Bay Times

Florida’s online voter registration system began experiencing “intermittent issues” Sunday that could have kept some residents from registering to vote online. Some users who went to RegistertovoteFlorida.gov on Sunday encountered a 503 error saying the service was unavailable. The Florida Department of State said Sunday evening that some users experienced issues but others have been able to submit voter registration applications. It said Sunday evening that the site appeared to be up and running. A reporter briefly encountered the error Monday morning, but the website came up when the site was refreshed. The state has added a notification to the website apologizing for any inconvenience and saying it’s working to resolve the issue “as expeditiously as possible.” It has not responded to a question of what caused the problem. The website issue comes at a time when some of the other channels for registering to vote are less available.

Idaho: May primary election won’t be delayed, but will go all-absentee | Betsy Z. Russell/Idaho Press

Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney said Monday afternoon that the governor won’t be delaying the May 19 primary election, but it’ll go all-absentee due to the risk from coronavirus. “He is not going to delay it,” Denney told the Idaho Press. “We still have some things to iron out about exactly what we will be trying to do … and I can tell you we’re going to push very, very hard for as much absentee as we can, so that we don’t have people having to be in contact with each other.” Gov. Brad Little’s office confirmed this decision in a press release later that afternoon and said Little will issue a proclamation addressing the election in the coming days. The election will be conducted by mail, the governor’s announcement states, noting “the move is necessary after it became clear that sufficient polling places and poll workers could not be obtained for the election.” There were legal impediments to delaying the election for a month, as Denney had requested. “Personally, I don’t think it’s legally impossible, but there was a question whether he had the authority to delay it or not,” Denney explained. “By not delaying it, it takes one more potential challenge off the table.”

New Jersey: Questions Remain About Whether Murphy Will Delay Primary, Use Mail-in Balloting | Colleen O’Dea/NJ Spotlight

This year’s primary election for seats representing New Jersey in Congress will feature contests that involve either one or both of the major parties in nearly all districts as well as the battle for Democratic U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s seat. What isn’t known now is how and when the primary, typically held on the first Tuesday in June, will take place. State officials are evaluating the situation, given the current state of emergency due to the spread of COVID-19, and are expected to make a decision soon. So far, Gov. Phil Murphy has declined to change the date of the primary, now scheduled for June 2, but he could choose to delay the vote or have it conducted entirely by mail if he thinks the disease will still be a threat in two months. Murphy already postponed some local and school board elections until May 12 and ordered that all elections by that date be conducted completely by mail-in balloting. Some states, including Pennsylvania and Connecticut, have postponed their primaries until June 2. That traditionally had been the last primary date for the presidential election, which is also this year. But other states have pushed their voting even further back — Louisiana until June 20, for instance, and New York and Kentucky until June 23.

New Mexico: Clerks seek emergency court action for all-mail voting in primary | Dan McKay/Albuquerque Journal

More than two dozen of New Mexico’s county clerks asked the state Supreme Court on Monday for an emergency order that would allow them to conduct the June 2 primary by mail. The clerks said they otherwise face an impossible choice – putting voters’ and election workers’ lives at risk or violating their oath of office – amid the coronavirus pandemic. “The state of New Mexico faces a public health emergency unprecedented in modern times,” the clerks said in an their petition. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s chief election officer, supports the petition, describing the move to mail-in ballots – with some exceptions for in-person voting – as a sensible way to protect public health and the right to vote. The unusual petition seeks emergency court intervention. The clerks acknowledge that an immediate special session – allowing the governor and legislators to change election laws – is a potential solution. But it isn’t practical to convene a session amid a virus outbreak that could kill hundreds of New Mexicans in the next few months, the clerks said, citing a projection by University of Washington researchers. The clerks also noted that most of New Mexico’s 112 legislators are 60 or older, putting them most at risk of the disease.

Ohio: Voting rights groups sue state over extended Ohio primary | Rick Rouan and Darrel Rowland/Columbus Dispatch

Voting rights advocates sued the state Monday over a new primary election plan state lawmakers adopted last week after polls were closed because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The League of Women Voters, A. Philip Randolph Institute and four individual voters filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging the plan violates the National Voter Registration Act and the First and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Immediate action is needed from the court “to prevent the state from compounding the current public health crisis into a crisis for democracy in Ohio,” the lawsuit said. Among the remedies they are seeking is to push the completion of the election to a later date. “Under the General Assembly’s undemocratic election scheme, thousands, if not millions, of Ohioans will not get to vote through no fault of their own,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, in a prepared statement.

Wisconsin: Legal Fight Over Wisconsin Primary Reaches State High Court | Joe Kelly/Courthouse News

Officials from a liberal-leaning Wisconsin county accused state Republicans of playing politics Monday in response to a petition filed in the state’s highest court challenging the county clerk’s decision to waive photo ID requirements for absentee ballots in next week’s primary in light of Covid-19 disruptions. Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, asked the state supreme court on Friday to review Dane County Clerk Scott McDonnell’s decision to allow certain voters to request and cast absentee ballots without presenting a photo ID, which was made on the basis that these voters are “indefinitely confined” due to the coronavirus outbreak and the various lockdown measures enacted to slow its spread. Republicans contend that clerks have no legal authority to waive the photo ID requirement and argued in their petition that “without this court’s intervention, the upcoming election will take place under two sets of different rules—one for voters in Dane County, and one for voters in the rest of the state.” The state GOP’s petition makes a grand total of five separate lawsuits brought in the last two weeks over how to proceed with Wisconsin’s April 7 primary election as the Covid-19 pandemic snarls governments and volatile markets and upends civic life across the globe. As of Monday afternoon, Wisconsin reported nearly 1,200 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 18 deaths.

Georgia (Sakartvelo): Personal details for the entire country of Georgia published online | Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet

The personal details for more than 4.9 million Georgians, including deceased citizens, has been published on a hacking forum over the weekend, on Saturday. Personal information such as full names, home addresses, dates of birth, ID numbers, and mobile phone numbers were shared online in a 1.04 GB MDB (Microsoft Access database) file. The leaked data was spotted by the Under the Breach, a data breach monitoring and prevention service, and shared with ZDNet over the weekend. The database contained 4,934,863 records including details for millions of deceased citizens — as can be seen from the screenshot below. Georgia’s current population is estimated at 3.7 million, according to a 2019 census. It is unclear if the forum user who shared the data is the one who obtained it. The data’s source also remains a mystery. On Sunday, ZDNet initially reported this leak over as coming from Georgia’s Central Election Commission (CEC), but in a statement on Monday, the commission denied that the data originated from its servers, as it contained information that they don’t usually collect.

Mali: Legislative elections hampered by low voter turnout | Ineke Mules/Deutsche Welle

Few turned out to vote in Mali’s long-delayed parliamentary elections over the weekend, as the country grapples with the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, the kidnapping of main opposition leader Soumalia Cisse, and an ongoing security crisis in the state’s north and central regions. An official turnout figure was not available at the closing of the polls. However, observers from a group of civil society associations estimated that the figure was close to 7.5%. In addition to concerns over the spread of coronavirus, which meant many chose to stay at home, at least 200,000 people who had been displaced by violence were also unable to vote. The elections had already been postponed several times – the last parliamentary poll was held in 2013, which saw President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s Rally for Mali party win a significant majority. The next parliamentary election was due to be held in late 2018 following Keita’s re-election, however the vote was repeatedly deferred owing to security issues. Mali announced its first coronavirus death on Saturday evening, just hours before the polls opened. The victim was a 71-year-old man who had recently returned from France. Mali currently has 20 confirmed cases of the virus. Several opposition parties had called for the election to be canceled due to fears over the spread of coronavirus. However, Prime Minister Boubou Cisse said proper precautions had been put in place and issued an appeal to voters to observe hygiene measures at the polls.

Wisconsin: ‘Your Health or the Right to Vote’: A Battle in Wisconsin as Its Primary Nears | Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

With April elections rapidly approaching in Wisconsin, local officials were issuing stark warnings about holding in-person voting amid the escalating coronavirus outbreak, saying the state was forcing voters to choose between their health and their constitutional right to vote. For weeks, both the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers remained unmoved, pledging to keep the polls open even as other states postponed elections. But on Friday, as the coronavirus cases in the state topped 700, Gov. Tony Evers reversed his position, instead requesting that absentee ballots be sent to every one of the state’s 3.3 million registered voters ahead of its April 7 presidential primary. The sudden request to print and mail millions of ballots in less than two weeks, a task Republican leaders in the state immediately dismissed as impossible, is the latest example of how the pandemic is roiling democratic institutions as states across the country scramble to protect voters and poll workers.

Editorials: Amid coronavirus, give clerks support to conduct the November election | Tina Barton, Kammi Foote and Paddy McGuire/Detroit Free Press

COVID-19 comes 102 years after the Spanish Flu epidemic that coincided with 1918 midterm elections, during Woodrow Wilson’s second term as president. Technology and the political climate have changed drastically in the last century, but protective measures such as quarantines, are eerily similar to today. In 1918, our country managed to hold its November election during a pandemic, suspending quarantines to do so, but it wasn’t without great cost to the health and safety of our nation. We election officials have confidence that we can hold the November 2020 presidential election if this pandemic continues, but we are going to need to act quickly, and without partisanship, if we are going to be successful in that endeavor. Today, more than ever before, local and state election officials across this country have the capacity to provide safe and transparent elections to all voters. We are calling on Congress and States to act now to provide the funding and local autonomy needed to protect the sanctity of this November’s election.

National: How Elections Got So Vulnerable—and What We Can Do Now | Alejandro de la Garza/Time

America’s democracy is at risk from more than Russian Twitter trolls. Our voting systems, the information technology that undergirds our elections, are dangerously outdated and vulnerable to attack. And for Finnish data security expert Harri Hursti, the best defense we have might be counting paper ballots. We don’t have to count every vote by hand, he says — just enough to prove with a reasonable standard of certainty that the electronic results are valid. And for Hursti, who founded a string of companies before becoming involved in the area of election security, such a low-tech solution might be our best chance to protect the core mechanisms of our democracy. Hursti is the subject of the new HBO documentary Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections, directed by Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale. The film, which premiered March 26, follows Hursti as he exposes the vulnerabilities of America’s election systems. Watching the doc and learning the extent of those weaknesses won’t necessarily help you sleep at night, but for activists and ethical hackers, the first step in fixing a system is showing that it was broken to begin with. Hursti spoke with TIME in advance of the film’s release, taking a deep look at the realities of American election security, psychological warfare and the information landscape in the age of coronavirus. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

National: Nationwide voting by mail will be a massive undertaking say those who’ve done it | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

It will take a massive effort of time and resources to increase voting by mail across the nation if the coronavirus pandemic is still jeopardizing in-person voting in November. And the $400 million appropriated by Congress is nowhere near enough to make it feasible. That’s the warning from election officials in states that vote almost entirely by mail, who say it took years of careful planning for them to make the transition. “It’s going to be a herculean effort, but failure is not an option,” Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman, whose state is among five that vote that way, told me. By contrast, there are 13 states that don’t currently even offer all their voters the option of casting ballots by mail, according to a tally released yesterday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The warnings underscore the unprecedented challenge facing officials who are beginning to contemplate a complete overhaul of their election operations during just seven months and in the midst of a global health crisis. The shift to better secure elections against hacking after Russian interference in 2016, by contrast, took place over more than three years and still produced mixed results.

National: Unease at the Polls Over Election Integrity | George Leopold/EE Times

The polling place in the gym at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School in northern Virginia was humming like a well-oiled machine on Super Tuesday morning, March 3. Poll workers were efficiently checking in voters, briskly directing them to cardboard cubicles where citizens filled out paper ballots tallied by electronic vote scanners. I handed my drivers’ license to a poll worker who placed it in a holder while pulling up the county database on a tablet device to confirm my eligibility to vote in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. “State your name and address,” she instructed. I was handed a ballot, directed to a tabletop voting “booth”, filled in the circle next to my choice, placed my ballot in the scanner that verified my vote had been duly recorded. Another poll worker handed me a be-flagged “I Voted” sticker and I was on my way. Exercising the franchise took all of ten minutes. Nothing to it. That is, if you live in the genteel suburbs of Washington, DC. Elsewhere, casting a vote can be an ordeal. Accurate votes counts are becoming more problematic. In many areas, touchscreen voting machines based on electronic pen technologies like “ballot marking devices” remain vulnerable. Recent legislation ostensibly designed to secure the 2020 presidential elections lack safeguards such as encryption, election security experts note.

National: The Coronavirus Could Change How We Vote, In 2020 And Beyond | Lee Drutman/FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 election will likely be different thanks to the new coronavirus. In fact, COVID-19 has already left its mark on the Democratic nomination race, with many states postponing their primaries. So it’s likely that in the coming months, states will begin to move toward allowing more voters to mail in their ballots, or at least cast votes early to spread people out. It’s entirely possible that Election Day 2020 will be more like Election Month (or perhaps months, depending on how long it takes to count the ballots). That means between now and November, states and election administrators are going to have to make lots of decisions about how they conduct elections. How they manage this may affect who votes and whose vote is counted, how campaigns operate, and perhaps even the level of uncertainty in the polls. In short, the mechanisms of the voting process may turn out to be as important this year as what the candidates say. We’re not starting from scratch, however. In 2016, roughly two in five voters cast their ballots early or by mail, which marked a record share of ballots cast by methods other than in person on Election Day.

National: Facebook, Google and Twitter Struggle to Handle November’s Election | Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

The day after the New Hampshire primary last month, Facebook’s security team removed a network of fake accounts that originated in Iran, which had posted divisive partisan messages about the U.S. election inside private Facebook groups. Hours later, the social network learned the campaign of Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, had sidestepped its political ad process by directly paying Instagram meme accounts to post in support of his presidential bid. That same day, a pro-Trump group called the Committee to Defend the President, which had previously run misleading Facebook ads, was found to be promoting a photo that falsely claimed to show Bernie Sanders supporters holding signs with divisive slogans such as “Illegal Aliens Deserve the Same as Our Veterans.” Facebook, Twitter, Google and other big tech companies have spent the past three years working to avoid a repeat of 2016, when their platforms were overrun by Russian trolls and used to amplify America’s partisan divide. The internet giants have since collectively spent billions of dollars hiring staff, fortifying their systems and developing new policies to prevent election meddling. But as the events of just one day — Feb. 12 — at Facebook showed, although the companies are better equipped to deal with the types of interference they faced in 2016, they are struggling to handle the new challenges of 2020.

National: Pandemic pushes states to vote-by-mail, bringing new challenges | Gopal Ratnam/Roll Call

States and local election jurisdictions across the country are preparing for a surge in voting by mail this November stemming from people’s reluctance to gather in crowds or even venture out if the coronavirus pandemic persists through late fall. The switch to mail-in ballots is likely to heighten security challenges both on cyber and physical fronts. While many western states including Oregon, Washington, Colorado and parts of California already rely heavily on vote-by-mail, states east of the Mississippi are likely to see an increase in absentee voter requests and for vote-by-mail, and are preparing for that, Ben Hovland, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, told CQ Roll Call in an interview. In conference calls with state officials, Hovland said he has heard them discuss changes in processes and procedures to prepare for a surge in vote-by-mail and the risks that could stem from the shift. “It adds to an already difficult job that state election officials face,” Hovland said. “People need to be aware of potential new risk vectors in as far as some jurisdictions are talking about creating an online portal for voters to request mail-in ballots.”

National: Coronavirus emerges as major threat to U.S. election process | John Whitesides and Jarrett Renshaw/Reuters

U.S. election officials looking to construct a safe voting system in a worsening coronavirus pandemic are confronting a grim reality: there may not be enough time, money or political will to make it happen by the November election. The possibility the pandemic could last into the fall, or flare again as millions of voters are set to choose the nation’s next president, has state and local officials scrambling for alternatives to help keep voters safe. The most-discussed proposals are to make mail-in voting available to all eligible voters nationwide, and to expand early in-person voting to limit the crowds on Election Day. But election officials say those changes will be costly and complex in a country where traditional voting remains ingrained. About six of every 10 ballots were cast in person on Election Day in 2016, Census data shows. Democrats fell far short in their effort to include at least $2 billion to help virus-proof the November elections as part of a $2.2-trillion coronavirus stimulus bill that was passed by the U.S. House on Friday. The package devotes $400 million to bolster vote by mail and early voting, expand facilities and hire more poll workers.

National: States Explore More Vote-By-Mail Options to Cope With Coronavirus | Alexa Corse and Dustin Volz/Wall StreetJournal

States are exploring ways to expand voting by mail and early voting ahead of the November general election to make sure balloting proceeds if the coronavirus pandemic persists. Election officials from state and local governments across the country held conference calls over the past week with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies on the logistical, financial and legal obstacles to rolling out expanded vote-by-mail initiatives, according to people who participated in the calls. A call last Friday featuring the U.S. Postal Service looked at the feasibility of implementing widespread mail voting, including the costs for mail-in ballot services and whether they could be reduced. Another call this week included the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess the coronavirus threat over the rest of the year. Early voting and voting by mail have increased across the country over the past two decades. Election experts said the coronavirus pandemic could supercharge that trend, overhauling how elections are conducted and accelerating the shift away from voting in person at a local polling site on Election Day.

Editorials: We know how much it will cost to safeguard voting from effects of the pandemic. Congress approved only one-fifth of that. | Wendy Weiser and Lawrence Norden/Politico

Federal lawmakers have reached a bipartisan agreement for a $2 trillion stimulus package aimed at ameliorating the public health and economic crises wreaked by the coronavirus. But in one critical respect, the deal is a colossal failure: it includes less than one-fifth of what is needed retrofit our voting systems for a nationwide pandemic in time for the November election. Unless Congress remedies this failure quickly, the coronavirus will add our democracy to its casualties. Don’t be lulled into complacency by the fact that there are seven months until November. The country needs to start making significant changes to our national election infrastructure now, or else it will be nearly impossible to hold a safe and fair election in the fall. Election officials across the country must have the funding to begin the enormous project before them. A bipartisan group of over 50 state and local election officials toldcongressional leaders this week that they face “unprecedented challenges” in carrying out their responsibility to “protect every voter and every vote.” To ensure a safe and secure election during the pandemic, these essential workers must receive significant financial assistance — immediately.

Arkansas: Federal suit asks to extend state’s deadline on absentee ballots | Linda Satter/Arkansas Democrat Gazette

The nonprofit Christian Ministerial Alliance, backed by a national legal group, turned to federal court Friday hoping to force state officials to extend the deadline by which absentee ballots must be submitted to be included in results of Tuesday’s runoff elections, in light of the covid-19 pandemic. On March 20, Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued an executive order suspending this week’s Tuesday deadline for absentee ballot applications to be emailed, faxed or mailed. But the requirement that election officials receive absentee ballots by 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday — election day — for the ballots to be counted has not been suspended, a federal lawsuit filed in Little Rock complains. It asserts “that provision poses a direct and severe obstacle to absentee voting.” “We don’t have the authority to alter election deadlines,” Chris Powell, spokesman for Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston, said Friday in response to the lawsuit, which he said Thurston was aware of and which followed discussions about the deadline between the governor’s office and the secretary of state’s office.

Editorials: It’s time for Connecticut to allow voting by mail | Denise Merrill/Hartford Courant

In Connecticut, we pride ourselves on ensuring that every citizen has the opportunity to make their voice heard, whether it be in town meetings, at the ballot box, or in referenda that many towns hold every year. Despite that legacy, we have fallen behind most states in one crucial area: making it easy for registered voters to actually cast their ballots. Forty-one states allow their voters to mail in a ballot without a reason, vote early in a polling place or both. Five states conduct all of their elections by mail, and California, Pennsylvania and others are moving in that direction by allowing permanent mail-in voting status. Connecticut stands with Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island as the only states in the country that won’t let voters vote before Election Day and won’t let them vote by mail without an excuse. And of those states, we have the ignominious distinction of having the most restrictive absentee ballot laws in the country. The argument for flexibility in voting methods isn’t that Connecticut is behind most other states, although we are, or that it would make it more convenient for voters to vote, although it would — the argument right now is that we are in a public health emergency, and our inflexibility is threatening our democracy.

District of Columbia: Officials To Encourage Absentee Voting By Mail, Limit In-Person Voting For June Primary | Martin Austermuhle/WAMU

D.C. officials say they plan on encouraging more residents to use absentee ballots to vote by mail and will limit the number of physical voting sites for the June 2 primary. The changes are part of a plan to let the primary proceed as planned, while also addressing concerns raised by the coronavirus pandemic. “We have two major priorities during this unprecedented emergency. One, make sure D.C. voters and D.C. Board of Elections staff and poll workers remain safe. Number two, make sure voters have an opportunity to vote and every vote is counted,” D.C. Board of Elections Chair Michael Bennett said on Friday. Bennett said they’re asking as many voters as possible to request absentee ballots, which require no excuse or explanation. They can be requested online or through the election board’s app, and the city will also open phone centers for anyone who wants to call to request a ballot. Those ballots, which will be ready for distribution by May 1, can be mailed in or dropped off at designated locations.

Georgia: Stamps become issue in Georgia’s absentee ballot plan | Susan McCord/The Augusta Chronicle

As Georgia begins to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters this week, the plan is raising questions about whether it goes far enough to protect voters. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Tuesday that his office is mailing absentee ballot applications to all 6.9 million registered voters in the state, an effort to limit possible transfer of the coronavirus at polling places. The cost to taxpayers is up to $13 million, but the plan only includes postage to mail the applications and the requested ballots to voters. The price tag does not cover the 55-cent stamp needed to return the application or the 65 cents in postage — more than the 55-cent Forever stamp — that area voters need to mail back the ballots. Gregg Murray, a political science professor at Augusta University, said the stamps are an added expense that could discourage some from participating. “Having to go get a stamp is a new cost for people that don’t usually do mail,” he said. “Voting is kind of a cost-benefit analysis that probably most people go through. If the benefits outweigh the costs, they will do it.” The stamps themselves could befuddle some younger voters. Murray said he wasn’t sure all his students were familiar with them.