National: Voting by Mail in November? States Need to Prepare Now | Alexa Corse and Robert McMillan/Wall Street Journal
Americans are expected to vote by mail in record numbers in November, but authorities are running out of time to secure the vast number of ballots and ballot-processing machines needed to ensure a smooth process, election and industry officials say. Many Americans will likely want or need to avoid polling stations in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic. A Department of Homeland Security-led working group said weeks ago that local governments should have started preparing in April if they want to ready their vote-by-mail systems for the November election. Many haven’t begun, and some states also still need to ease legal restrictions to even allow widespread mail-balloting. Carrying out such voting faces potential choke points even for states that have already started preparing, such as printing enough ballots and deploying sufficient scanners to quickly count those votes, election procedure experts say. Runbeck Election Services Inc., one of the country’s largest mail-ballot printers, is already getting order inquiries for November surpassing what it could handle, company President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Ellington said. To prepare, the Phoenix-based company in March bought 11 new machines that can insert thousands of ballots into envelopes per hour, tripling its capacity so it can produce about 20 million ballots by November. Even that, he said, may not be sufficient.