National: The vote by mail fault lines that could define November’s election | Kendall Karson/ABC
The ongoing legal wrangling over voting rights and access, an issue that has become an undercurrent of the 2020 election, foreshadows some of the expected clashes to come ahead of November’s uncertain general election. The quarrels center on expanding mail voting as states adjust to the unprecedented coronavirus crisis, particularly in key battlegrounds that could tip the scales of the upcoming presidential contest. In states such as Georgia, Texas, Nevada and Florida, among others, state and party leaders are seeking to change the way people vote to avoid a similar fate as Wisconsin, where a series of emergency orders and legal challenges earlier this month culminated in thousands of voters risking their health to stand in long lines for hours to vote. Since Wisconsin's election, state health officials said Tuesday that 19 people who have either voted in-person or worked at a polling site on election day have so far tested positive for COVID-19 after April 9, two days after the spring election — underscoring the potential risks of forging ahead with an in-person voting during the height of the widespread and deadly public health crisis.National: Coronavirus displaced millions of college students, who worry how they’re going to vote | Rebecca Morin/USA Today
Ashee Groce doesn’t know if she’ll be able to vote in Georgia’s primary. Groce, 21, attends Spelman College in Atlanta but is from California and staying in South Carolina with a friend after her school closed for the the semester during the coronavirus pandemic. California voted when Groce was in Atlanta. Georgia was supposed to vote March 24 but pushed back its primary until June 9, and Groce doesn't know if she will be able to get an absentee ballot sent to South Carolina. She didn't return to California amid the pandemic, because she has family there who are immunocompromised. “Me and a lot of my peers are afraid," Groce said. "I just feel like a lot of people who look like me and who are in similar situations that I'm in aren't going to be counted, and that's just a very big disappointment." Many young voters' lives have been upended after universities and colleges closed campuses and moved to online classes. As a result, millions of students have left their college housing and headed home to different cities and, in some cases, different states. More than 4,000 colleges and universities have closed or been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, affecting more than 25 million students, according to Entangled Solutions, an education consultant group.National: How Multi-factor Authentication Enhances Election Security | Phil Goldstein/StateTech Magazine
Multifactor authentication is “a layered approach to securing data and applications where a system requires a user to present a combination of two or more credentials to verify a user’s identity for login,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notes in its election security resource library. Election security officials should use MFA because it adds another layer of defense to their systems. Even if one credential is compromised, an attacker cannot log in without the other authentication requirement “and will not be able to access the targeted physical space, computing device, network or database,” DHS notes. Multifactor authentication includes something you know, such as a password or personal identification number; something you have, including a token or cryptographic device; and something you are — a biometric identifier such as a fingerprint. Other authentication factors can include time of day (would the user normally be logging in at this hour?) and how users access information on their personal devices over time (does the user tap into her email first or check the weather?). A document on MFA published by DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency notes that election officials should adopt MFA because it makes it more difficult for adversaries to gain access to secure databases and other election infrastructure.National: The 2020 Elections: Is America Ready to Vote by Mail? | Carl Smith/Governing
The 2020 general election was never going to be calm, but the COVID-19 pandemic has brought worst-case scenarios out of the shadows and into the forefront of planning. That means secretaries of state, election officials, legislators, lawyers, voters rights groups and other stakeholders are gathering strategies and resources to safeguard both public health and democracy. “It’s a given that the election in November will be different than ones we've held in the past,” said Wendy Underhill, director of the Elections and Redistricting program for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “States can scale up their existing processes, or they can adopt new processes with the expectation of more mail-in ballots and fewer in-person voters.” “We've got to reduce the number of people who have to show up in person to vote, and the only way to do that is vote by mail,” said Chad Dunn, director of litigation for the UCLA Voting Rights Project and a co-author of its election policy recommendations. “We’ve got to flatten the curve,” “As election officials, we shouldn't ignore the message that voters are sending,” said Neal Kelley, the registrar of voters for Orange County, Calif., the country’s fifth-largest voting jurisdiction. “This country has been using widespread absentee voting since the Civil War.”National: NAACP, others: in-person voting still needed during coronavirus pandemic | Joey Garrison /USA Today
As calls mount to expand vote-by-mail options for state primaries and the November election, advocacy groups have a warning: Don't reduce or eliminate in-person voting in the process. In a joint publication released Monday, the NAACP and the liberal Center for American Progress say curbing or entirely cutting in-person options because of the coronavirus pandemic would "inadvertently disenfranchise" African American, disabled, American Indian and other voters who rely on same-day voter registration. "To prevent the disenfranchisement of American citizens, any expansion of vote by mail must include preservation of in-person voting options for people who need them," the groups said in the report. Their message comes as several states are working to expand vote-by-mail in case citizens are still advised to avoid public places in November because of the coronavirus. Democrats, including presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and former first lady Michelle Obama, have made vote-by-mail a rallying cry while President Donald Trump opposes changes.National: How the Spanish flu nearly derailed women’s right to vote | Ellen Carol Dubois/National Geographic
“These are sad times for the whole world, grown unexpectedly sadder by the sudden and sweeping epidemic of influenza,” wrote Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in a letter to supporters in 1918. “This new affliction is bringing sorrow into many suffrage homes and is presenting a serious new obstacle in our Referendum campaigns and in the Congressional and Senatorial campaigns,” she continued. “We must therefore be prepared for failure.” Suffragists had been fighting for women’s right to vote for 70 years, and victory seemed almost in reach. Even with the United States fully mobilized for World War I. President Woodrow Wilson had come out in support of a constitutional amendment, and the House of Representatives had passed it. Then the Spanish flu struck, and the leaders of one of the longest-running political movements in the country’s history had to figure out how to continue their campaign in the midst of the deadliest pandemic in modern times. (See how some cities 'flattened the curve' of the flu pandemic.)National: Coronavirus Likely To Supercharge Election-Year Lawsuits Over Voting Rights | Pam Fessler/NPR
Election year legal battles around voting procedures are nothing new. But their scope and intensity are growing this year amid deep partisan polarization and the logistical challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic. The legal fights are expected to heat up in the coming weeks. Exhibit A is a new lawsuit filed by Democrats in Nevada Thursday challenging the state's plans to conduct a mostly all-mail primary June 2 and to drastically limit in-person polling sites. Democrats say the moves — including automatically sending ballots only to active voters who have taken part in recent elections, but not all registered ones — are an infringement of voter rights. Republicans counter that Democrats want to overturn rules intended to protect the integrity of the state's elections and would unnecessarily put voters' health at risk. Both Democrats and Republicans are turning to the courts to try to ensure that rules governing this year's election don't disadvantage their side. The litigation campaign has taken on a new urgency with the pandemic and its impact on people's willingness and ability to go to the polls in person.National: Mail-In Elections Can’t Be Built Overnight. Here’s What Will Happen If Every State Tries. | Tierney Sneed/Talking Points Memo
On Thursday, a niche trade organization called the National Association of Presort Mailers held the first of what is expected to be a regularly scheduled organization-wide teleconference. The call was to discuss a daunting task with which its members will be deeply involved: printing, packaging and mailing ballots for a general election in the midst of a pandemic. On the call, the companies with the most experience working in the election space issued a dire warning to their colleagues, according to the leader of the trade group: with longstanding orders from established mail-in voting states, these companies said, they were already at capacity for printing and mailing operations for November’s election. If more states and localities sought to expand their mail-in voting operations, those vendors — who typically work with the western states that already conduct massive absentee voting operations — would need to purchase more equipment. But obtaining that equipment takes several months, National Association of Presort Mailers president Richard Gebbie told TPM after the call, and vendors wouldn’t make that seven-figure investment without the contracts to justify it. The conundrum, Gebbie fretted to TPM, is that if election officials wait even more than a few weeks to put in those orders, it would be too late for those vendors to scale up their own capacity.National: Election Modifications to Avoid During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Michael Morley/Lawfare
As we approach the presidential election this November, election officials are developing plans to deal with the unique risks posed by the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. I have written about how states have grappled with past election emergencies and am participating in a nonpartisan task force and interdisciplinary working groups to offer recommendations to ensure that election officials are adequately prepared to face the challenge before us. The recent crisis with the Wisconsin presidential primaries demonstrates the importance of states having election emergency statutes that adequately empower election officials to respond to unexpected crises, as well as contingency plans for implementing that discretion. Just as important as discussing the affirmative steps that officials should take to address the COVID-19 crisis, however, is identifying those they should avoid. Because so many groups and experts, along with my previous work, have focused on the first task, it’s time to tackle the second.National: Coronavirus could cripple voting in November. But it depends where you live. | David Wasserman/NBC
America's decentralized system of voting means states enjoy broad leeway on setting election rules. Many voters may not realize that state procedures vary widely on everything from registration deadlines, ID requirements and types of voting machinery to who is permitted to vote absentee and when mail-in ballots must be postmarked in order to be counted. But in the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of federal election funding, partisan disunity and legal disputes could produce last-minute logistical confusion and drastic disparities across state lines in voters' ability to safely access a ballot. Last week's election in Wisconsin ignited outrage from voting rights advocates, who claimed courts' refusal to grant Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' last-minute request to suspend in-person voting and extend the absentee ballot return deadline forced voters to choose between democracy and their health. The April 7 balloting turned into an administrative fiasco of mass polling-place closures, backlogs that caused 11,000 absentee ballot requests to go unfulfilled, and at least 35,000 voters receiving absentee ballots with incorrect return instructions.National: Coronavirus threatens to hobble voter registration efforts | Sara Swann/The Fulcrum
The coronavirus has already drastically compromised campaigns and voting this year. The next looming casualty looks to be registration drives. With about 95 percent of the population under states' orders to stay at home this spring, face-to-face "Get Out the Vote!" crusades so typical in election years have ceased to exist. Civic engagement groups, now forced to operate entirely online, are expressing alarm that a significant share of people who want a say in electing the president this fall won't be able to get on the voter rolls in time. The country's digital divide already makes accessing online registration forms and information difficult for many Americans, particularly in low-income and rural areas. And for some 28 million across nine states, it's not an option at all because they have to complete actual paperwork. Groups focused on creating new voters, and then making them the core of efforts to boost turnout, say they're determined to rise to the challenge. The Covid-19 crisis has underscored the importance of their mission, they say, and their staff and volunteers are using the unprecedented situation to get more creative in their approaches.National: Coronavirus may stop hundreds of thousands from becoming citizens in time to vote in November | Suzanne Gamboa/NBC
Cancellation of citizenship oath ceremonies and in-person interviews because of coronavirus means hundreds of thousands of people may not naturalize in time for November’s elections. If ceremonies and interviews remain shut down until October without remote alternatives created by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 441,000 people who would have been citizens would be deprived of the chance to vote, according to Boundless Immigration, a technology company that helps immigrants apply for green cards and citizenship. “USCIS did the right thing by pausing live oath ceremonies and live interviews, there’s no dispute about that,” said Doug Rand, cofounder of Boundless Immigration. “The problem is USCIS hasn’t come up with a next step and come up with remote pathways for people to take the oath and do interviews,” said Rand, a former adviser to President Barack Obama on immigration.National: Will the Pandemic Keep Third Parties Off the 2020 Ballot? | Bill Scher/Politico
The pandemic may have robbed Donald Trump of a growing economy. It may have trapped Joe Biden in his basement. But it may yet do something even worse to the Libertarian and Green party nominees: Keep them off the ballot in many of this year’s key states.
In 2016, the Libertarian Party was on the general election ballot in all 50 states; this year, it has secured ballot access in just 35. Similarly, the Green Party—which in 2016 had its best election ever by making the ballot in 44 states, with a further three states granting the party’s candidate official write-in status—has qualified for the November ballot in only 22 states.
Several of the elusive ballot lines are in states that in 2016 were either narrowly won or flipped from red-to-blue. At present, neither the Libertarian Party nor the Green Party has qualified for the ballot in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa or Minnesota. Additionally, the Green Party has not secured a place on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia or Nevada, and the Libertarian Party is missing from Maine.
To get on the ballot in the remaining states, they need to collect and submit petition signatures. And in a normal year, they would be on track to do just that. But because of the deadly coronavirus—and the social distancing and stay-at-home orders to minimize its spread—after March 6, “petitioning was over in the United States,” as Libertarian Party executive director Daniel Fishman told me.
For America’s third parties, this is nothing less than an existential crisis. Without ballot access, national pollsters won’t feel obligated to include Green and Libertarian candidates in their surveys; voters will be less aware of their nominees and platforms; journalists will be less likely to pay any attention to them; and the probability diminishes that either the Libertarians or Greens can reach the holy grail of 5 percent of the popular vote—the point at which they would finally qualify for federal campaign matching funds.
But for the Democratic and Republican Parties, the absence of third parties from the ballot in key states makes 2020 genuinely unlike any presidential election in recent memory—minimizing the chances for “spoiler” candidates, while giving both major parties something they did not have in 2016: a two-person presidential race and a simpler path to victory.
Now, don’t count out the Libertarians and Greens just yet. There are multiple fronts in the fight ahead, as they see it, and they’re prepared for battle on each one.
What the Libertarians and Greens want most is for states to waive all remaining petition signature requirements. On March 30, Vermont did just that, via emergency legislation signed by the governor. (The Libertarian Party was already on the ballot in Vermont, but the legislation added a state to the Green Party list.) Ballot Access News reports that “[i]t is believed that Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont will soon issue an order declaring political parties that are ballot-qualified for at least one statewide office to be deemed ballot-qualified for all partisan federal and state office, for 2020” (though the Libertarians and Greens have already qualified for the presidential election there).