National: Voting During Coronavirus: Will We Have Universal Vote-by-Mail by November? | Emilie Mutert/NBC
The experts are clear: The coronavirus will be here through the summer and will stick around through November’s general election. An American presidential election has never been postponed or canceled, but with warnings from health officials discouraging crowds – which are generally unavoidable at polling places – officials are in many cases already working to ensure they have the extra resources needed to implement vote-by-mail on an expanded scale. “It’s either going to be vote-by-mail or nothing if we have to deal with a worst-case scenario,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is sponsoring an emergency bill to expand vote-by-mail, has said. Others say vote-by-mail would have to be part of a suite of responses, such as extended early in-person voting with crowd controls and “curbside voting,” which allows voters concerned about entering a polling place to return a ballot without leaving their car, NBC News reported.