Wyoming Voter ID bill may be tip of the iceberg for electoral bills | Billy Arnold/Jackson Hole Daily

The Wyoming Legislature is considering a voter ID law, and the majority of Teton County’s delegation is confident it will pass. They also believe more bills seeking to change election systems are coming. Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, moderated Wednesday’s all-day legislative update, in which he and Teton County’s other representatives and senators chatted with local officials, business leaders and citizens about the state of the ongoing legislative session. They talked about taxes, school funding, state school trust lands in Teton County and more. But when it came to discussing proposed changes to the state’s election system, Democrats Rep. Andy Schwartz and Sen. Mike Gierau were dismayed. “I know virtually every county clerk and election officer in the state of Wyoming,” Gierau said, “and I happen to know for a fact that they would rather lose an arm than run a bad election. It’s just absolutely incredible to me that this would even come up. “But it will,” he said, “and it will pass.” Schwartz said he thought the measure proposed could make voting “difficult.” If the voter ID bill passes, as Gierau said, Wyoming will become one of only a handful of states to require photo identification to cast a ballot. The other states are Wisconsin, Kansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia.

Full Article: Voter ID bill may be tip of the iceberg for electoral bills | Local | jhnewsandguide.com

Pennsylvania: Election officials want a say in voting reforms, but politics may get in the way | Marie Albiges/Philadelphia Inquirer

Democrats and Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature haven’t agreed on much when it comes to the 2020 election — only that change is needed. Those changes will be hotly debated during the General Assembly’s next session, which begins this week. Already, two Republicans have proposed eliminating universal mail-in voting altogether, while some Democrats are again pushing in-person early voting. But the people who actually run elections across the state, whose pleas for assistance have been largely ignored by the legislature over the past few months, said they should be front-and-center in the reform process — not partisanship and misinformation. In 2021, they want their voices to be heard. “We feel pretty strongly that we want to be at the table for those conversations with our legislature,” said Sherene Hess, an Indiana County commissioner and chair of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania election reform committee. “There’s no question that we can improve, and now is the time to do it.” Central to the discussions of election law changes will be the state’s expansion of mail-in voting for any registered voter. Passed in 2019 and used for the first time last year in the midst of a pandemic that prevented many from going to the polls, Act 77 contributed to Pennsylvania’s record turnout in the general election, with more than 2.6 million people casting a ballot by mail.

Full Article: Election officials want a say in Pa.’s voting reforms, but politics may get in the way

National: Despite Risks, Some States Still Use Paperless Voting Machines | Lucas Ropek/Government Technology

For years, paperless voting machines have been characterized as an election security hazard. Without an auditable paper trail, security experts say vote tabulation runs the risk of producing results inconsistent with the voters’ choices, either because of hacking or technical errors. While most states have seen adoption of hybrid digital-paper solutions that include a voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), not all of them have.Today, counties in Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and New Jersey are still exclusively using paperless machines, also called direct recording electronic systems (DREs).Derek Tisler, election security analyst with the Brennan Center, said the number of states using DREs has nearly halved since the last election, but there are a smattering of states that, for reasons mostly financial, still have not switched.”In 2016, there were 14 states that used paperless machines as the primary polling place equipment in at least some of their counties and towns. They represented about 1 in 5 votes that were cast in the 2016 election,” said Tisler. “Since then, six of those states have fully transitioned to some sort of paper-based voting equipment.”

Full Article: Despite Risks, Some States Still Use Paperless Voting Machines

‘Perception Hacks’ and Other Potential Threats to the Election | David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

In Georgia, a database that verifies voter signatures was locked up by Russian hackers in a ransomware attack that also dumped voters’ registration data online. In California and Indiana, Russia’s most formidable state hackers, a unit linked to the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., bored into local networks and hit some election systems, though it is still unclear why. In Louisiana, the National Guard was called in to stop cyberattacks aimed at small government offices that employed tools previously seen only in attacks by North Korea. And on Tuesday night, someone hacked the Trump campaign, defacing its website with a threatening message in broken English warning that there would be more to come. None of these attacks amounted to much. But from the sprawling war room at United States Cyber Command to those monitoring the election at Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, experts are watching closely for more “perception hacks.” Those are smaller attacks that can be easily exaggerated into something bigger and potentially seized upon as evidence that the whole voting process is “rigged,” as President Trump has claimed it will be.

Full Article: ‘Perception Hacks’ and Other Potential Threats to the Election – The New York Times

National: Coronavirus cases are surging again. These states have refused to loosen rules on who can vote by mail. | Elise Viebeck and Arelis R. Hernández/The Washington Post

Coronavirus cases are rising again in Texas, but most voters fearful of infection are not allowed to cast ballots by mail. For the limited number who qualify with a separate excuse, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott restricted drop-off locations to one per county. And when the Democratic stronghold of Harris County took steps to make voting easier, GOP leaders sued local officials. Texas is one of five red states that emerged as conspicuous holdouts this year as the rest of the country rushed to loosen voting rules because of the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the roughly 30 million registered voters who live there, and in Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee have no choice but to cast ballots in person this fall, even as the rate of coronavirus in the United States approaches its third peak. The situation underscores how the nation’s decentralized election systems and Republican opposition to mail voting this year are translating into vastly different voting experiences for Americans, depending on where they live. Legal challenges to the voting limits have foundered in some courts, rejected by a federal judiciary that has shifted rightward under President Trump.

Editorial: Actually, Americans Do Want to Wear Masks to Vote | Joshua A. Douglas and ichael A. Zilis/Politico

Over the next couple of weeks, as around 60 million Americans arrive at polling places to cast their ballots, they’ll face an array of safety protocols to protect them from the risk of Covid-19. Most states will require them to stand at least 6 feet apart and observe social-distancing requirements. And most will require masks for both poll workers and voters.But not all. With the mask and other pandemic safety measures remaining a political issue, several states have explicitly said masks aren’t required, or are leaving the rules loose.South Carolina’s rules on masks in public explicitly exclude voters and election workers. Texas’ attorney general recently reminded voters that the state’s mask mandate does not apply while voting. (In its July primary, some poll workers in Texas left when their fellow poll workers refused to wear a mask.) Indiana will provide face masks to poll workers and voters who do not have them, but it is not clear how much pressure there will be to ensure that everyone complies. Indeed, one Indiana official in charge of local elections is refusing to wear one during early voting. Alabama will allow anyone to switch to an absentee ballot by citing Covid-19 concerns—but will not require either poll workers or voters to wear a mask.

Editorials: How Has the Electoral College Survived for This Long? | Alexander Keyssar/The New York Times

As our revived national conversation on race has made clear, the legacies of slavery and white supremacy run wide and deep in American society and political life. One such legacy — which is particularly noteworthy in a presidential election season — has been the survival and preservation of the Electoral College, an institution that has been under fire for more than 200 years. Our complicated method of electing presidents has been the target of recurrent reform attempts since the early 19th century, and the politics of race and region have figured prominently in their defeat. It is, of course, no secret that slavery played a role in the original design of our presidential election system — although historians disagree about the centrality of that role. The notorious formula that gave states representation in Congress for three-fifths of their slaves was carried over into the allocation of electoral votes; the number of electoral votes granted to each state was (and remains) equivalent to that state’s representation in both branches of Congress. This constitutional design gave white Southerners disproportionate influence in the choice of presidents, an edge that could and did affect the outcome of elections. Not surprisingly, the slave states strenuously opposed any changes to the system that would diminish their advantage. In 1816, when a resolution calling for a national popular vote was introduced in Congress for the first time, it was derailed by the protestations of Southern senators. The slaveholding states “would lose the privilege the Constitution now allows them, of votes upon three-fifths of their population other than freemen,” objected William Wyatt Bibb of Georgia on the floor of the Senate. “It would be deeply injurious to them.”

National: Microsoft Makes Azure Compatible with Election Security Sensors | Phil Goldstein/StateTech Magazine

With a little more than 100 days before the general election on Nov. 3, state governments, nonprofits and technology companies are increasing their efforts to enhance election cybersecurity. In late June, Microsoft announced a partnership with the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which runs the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Microsoft has made its Azure cloud platform compatible with election network security sensors from CIS. Separately, CIS launched a pilot program with several states to test and verify voter registration databases, election night reporting systems and other systems. Taken together, they represent increased election security efforts. However, time is running out before Election Day, making it urgent for state and local governments to put new enhancements in place sooner rather than later.

National: How Voter-Fraud Hysteria and Partisan Bickering Ate American Election Oversight | Jessica Huseman/ProPublica

On March 20, state election administrators got on a conference call with the Election Assistance Commission to plead for help. The EAC is the bipartisan federal agency established for the precise purpose of maintaining election integrity through emergencies, and this was by every account an emergency. In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus had grown from an abstract concern to a global horror, and vote by mail was the only way ballots could safely be cast in the states that had not yet held their primaries. But many officials didn’t know the basics: what machines they would need and where to get them; what to tell voters; how to make sure ballots reached voters and were returned to county offices promptly and securely. “I have a primary coming up, and I have no idea what to do,” Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said on the call. She and her colleagues didn’t get the help they were looking for. Of the EAC’s four commissioners, only chair Ben Hovland spoke, and his responses were too vague to satisfy his listeners. The lack of direction was “striking,” said one participant, Jennifer Morrell, an elections consultant and a contractor for The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “It felt to me that there was no leadership. Nobody was saying, ‘Hey, let’s figure this out.’ Questions just went unanswered.” The commission punted. On a follow-up call, Hovland volunteered the state of Washington, which votes almost entirely by mail, to respond to questions and provide materials. But Washington built its vote by mail system over more than a decade and had accumulated thousands of pages of detailed instructions, too much for other states to implement quickly. Hovland agreed in vague terms to pitch in, but others involved saw little evidence. “We started working with the EAC, and then it just started to get kind of cold,” said Kim Wyman, Washington’s secretary of state. “Nothing happened, nothing good or bad. Just nothing.”

National: Revealed: US spends millions of taxpayer dollars on ineffective voting restrictions | Spenser Mestel/The Guardian

Restrictive “voter identification” laws pushed by Republicans, and widely regarded to be ineffective and discriminatory, have cost taxpayers at least $36m in just a few states, the Guardian can reveal. It’s well documented that restrictive voter ID laws are ineffective and discriminatory. The type of voter fraud they claim to prevent is a myth, and the burden of showing an ID disproportionately lands on students, low-income voters and African Americans. However, these laws are also extraordinarily expensive to implement and defend. Based on information obtained through open records requests, the Guardian has found that the partial costs of litigation, free identification cards, public education and other fees amount to tens of millions across the country. However, even with many states having to slash their budgets due to the economic crisis, one state, Kentucky, has decided to spend millions implementing a new ID law.

Editorials: Congress must act to protect the legitimacy of the election this fall | Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Tim Roemer and Zach Wamp/The Hill

Nothing is more sacred in our democratic republic than the right to free and fair elections. But that right is being threatened by those who seek to promote fear and division. If fear prevails, the United States could be on a collision course to disaster in November. We cannot allow that to happen. Our nation is in an unprecedented situation. While state election officials have tried their best to hold primaries as the coronavirus pandemic rages, there have been major problems with the operations of several contests, from Georgia to Wisconsin, and plenty of challenges in others. The causes of these problems were largely predictable. Polling stations were shut down, often without notice, due to a lack of workers, meaning long lines at those polling stations that were open. There were faulty and untested equipment and poll workers not knowing how to operate them. There were delayed results and absentee ballot requests not processed due to current staffing levels. None of this is acceptable in 2020. Local and state officials from both parties know best what assistance they need to prepare for the election. They have made their calls clear for new funding, including federal funding, to help make voting safe and secure. The $400 million they have received so far from Congress unfortunately does not even begin to cover all of the costs to make voting safe.

National: Virus vs. voting: Behind the high-risk presidential primary elections | Katie Pyzyk/Smart Cities Dive

Milwaukee voters stood just inches apart in lines that stretched for blocks outside of voting centers on April 7, all waiting to cast ballots in the state’s presidential primary. On a typical Election Day, passersby wouldn’t bat an eye at this scene. But on this Election Day — and every that has passed since early March — the prevalence of COVID-19 has raised health and safety concerns that leave some voters weighing the value of health versus that of participating in the democratic process. The proximity of Milwaukee’s voters followed Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute attempt to postpone the primary, as other states had done. The effort was blocked by the state Supreme Court, and as a result, only 3% of Milwaukee’s polling sites opened to serve a population of nearly 600,000. Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, told Smart Cities Dive there are many states with leaders who are “either ignoring the risks or deliberately trying to tilt the balance to suppress voters.” “We’ve seen that in Wisconsin, and I think we’re going to see it in other places as well,” he said.

National: Trump suggests delaying presidential election as dire economic data released | Ed Pilkington, Joanna Walters, Julian Borger and David Smith/The Guardian

Donald Trump has floated the idea of delaying November’s presidential election, repeating his false claim that widespread voting by mail from home would result in a “fraudulent” result. Trump made the incendiary proposal, which is not within his power to order, in a Thursday morning tweet that came as the country reeled from disastrous economic news and a coronavirus death toll that now exceeds 150,000 people. The suggestion prompted swift and fervent rejections from experts and critics, as well as high-profile members of his own party. Trump claimed without evidence that “universal mail-in voting” would lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”. The president also claimed the result would be a “great embarrassment to the USA”, and raised the prospect of a postponement. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he tweeted. But the US constitution grants the power to set an election date to Congress, not the president. “No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved,” Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner with the US Federal Election Commission, tweeted. “States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”

National: 16 Trump officials who have voted by mail recently, despite Trump’s warnings about it | Aaron Blake/The Washington Post

President Trump spent much of his Monday on Twitter decrying the supposed dangers of voting by mail. And in that effort, he got an assist over the weekend from Attorney General William P. Barr. Appearing on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo, Barr said twice that expanded voting by mail would open “the floodgates of potential fraud.” “Right now, a foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots, and [it would] be very hard for us to detect which was the right and which was the wrong ballot,” Barr said. Barr’s allegation has astounded election experts, who say something on the scale he’s talking about is simply unthinkable. Basically, localities know who they’ve sent ballots to and would be aware of duplicate ballots or ballots being returned by people who were never sent them. Yet here Barr is raising it again — and with no pushback from the Fox host. Barr’s commentary, though, is similar to Trump’s in one key respect: While warning against the dangers of voting by mail, Barr himself has used it. As The Washington Post reported earlier this month, Barr voted absentee in both the 2019 and 2012 elections. Voting absentee and opposing making voting by mail easier aren’t inherently at odds, it bears noting. One could know that their own absentee ballot is legitimate, for example, while believing that expanding the practice could lead to problems with other ballots. And one could believe that being out of state is a valid excuse but not wanting to show up to vote during the coronavirus pandemic isn’t.

National: Democratic election officials punch back on Trump mail voting claims | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Democratic election officials are punching back at President Trump’s unfounded claims that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud. In a new digital ad, Democratic secretaries of state describe the president’s assault on mail voting as an effort to suppress minority votes and link it to a long history of racist voting requirements such as poll taxes. The video also attacks Trump and Republicans for other actions that make it harder to vote, such as voter ID laws and purging the files of people who haven’t voted in several elections. “White supremacy has no place in our elections and no place in our country,” the ad declares. It pledges Democratic secretaries of state will work to ensure voting by mail is an option for everyone during the coronavirus pandemic. The ad – released at the same time as a new website promoting Democratic secretary of state candidates – marks a significant rhetorical escalation from election officials who’ve spent much of the pandemic countering the president’s unfounded claims with facts and figures that show fraud rates from voting by mail are exceptionally low. It also underscores the stakes as election officials struggle to maintain public faith in the security and credibility of the 2020 elections while Trump continually undermines it.

National: States failed to get absentee ballots to thousands of voters in recent primary elections, signaling problems for November | Marshall Cohen and Kelly Mena/CNN

As Washington, DC’s June 2 primary approached, Matthew Miller and Nima Sheth, married professors who live in the District, decided to vote absentee. With elderly, immunocompromised parents at home, plus a 1-year-old baby, it felt like the safest choice in the age of coronavirus. So, they submitted requests for absentee ballots on the last day of eligibility, a week before the primary. They got a confirmation email from the DC Board of Elections. But Miller’s ballot never arrived, and Sheth’s ballot was sent to the wrong address. Neither ended up voting. “It wasn’t a risk we were willing to take, at least for the primary,” Miller said, “Though November might be a different story. You just don’t think something like this could happen in a country like America, where, if you follow the rules, you should be able to vote.” Miller and Sheth are among tens of thousands of voters who didn’t get their requested absentee ballots in recent primaries, including in the battleground states of Georgia and Wisconsin. In Maryland, where all registered voters were automatically supposed to get ballots in the mail, about 160,000 ballots, roughly 5% of those sent out, weren’t delivered, officials say.

National: Beyond Georgia: A Warning for November as States Scramble to Expand Vote-by-Mail | Nick Corasaniti and Michael Wines/The New York Times

The 16 statewide primary elections held during the pandemic reached a glaring nadir on Tuesday as Georgia saw a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems compounded by the state’s rapid expansion of vote-by-mail. But around the country, elections that have been held over the past two months reveal a wildly mixed picture, dominated by different states’ experiences with a huge increase in voting by mail. Over all, turnout in the 15 states and Washington, D.C., which rapidly expanded vote-by-mail over the past few months, remained high, sometimes at near record levels, even as the Democratic presidential primary was all but wrapped. The good news was millions were able to vote safely, without risking their health. The bad news was a host of infrastructure and logistical issues that could have cost thousands their opportunity to vote: ballots lost in the mail; some printed on the wrong paper, with the wrong date or the wrong language; others arriving weeks after they were requested or never arriving at all. But the most definitive lesson for November may be what many have already begun to accept — that there’s an enormous chance many states, including key battlegrounds, will not finish counting on election night. The implications are worrisome in a bitterly divided nation facing what many consider the most consequential election in memory with the loudest voice belonging to an incumbent president who is prone to promoting falsehoods about the electoral system.

Editorials: There is no place for age discrimination in voting | Yael Bromberg, Jason Harrow and Joshua Douglas/The Hill

Holding safe and fair elections in the midst of a pandemic is challenging for everyone—but eight states make it even harder for voters under a certain age to participate this year. That’s unconstitutional, because the Constitution prohibits age discrimination in voting. Unfortunately, last week, the Missouri legislature and a federal appeals court in Texas both entrenched this discrimination when they could have eliminated it. Both of these actions should be overturned. In sixteen states, voters must provide an excuse to vote at home (voting from home is also known as voting “by mail” or “absentee”). In these states, voters may vote at home only if they are away from the jurisdiction, are physically disabled, or have another specific excuse. Before last week, seven states—Texas, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky—grant an automatic excuse for voters above a certain age: usually age 65, but sometimes 60. In these states, older voters do not need any other excuse to vote at home, but younger voters do.

National: Turnout surges after states expand mail-in voting | Max Greenwood/The Hill

States that moved to rapidly expand mail-in balloting amid the coronavirus pandemic are seeing some of their highest levels of voter turnout in years, even as President Trump looks to clamp down on such efforts. In at least four of the eight states that held primaries on Tuesday, turnout surpassed 2016 levels, with most of the votes being cast via mail, according to an analysis of election returns by The Hill. Each of those states took steps earlier this year to send absentee ballot applications to all of their registered voters. In Iowa, for instance, total turnout reached 24 percent, up from about 15 percent in the state’s 2016 primaries and its highest ever turnout for a primary. But more strikingly, of the roughly 524,000 votes cast, some 411,000 of them came from absentee ballots – a nearly 1,000 percent increase over 2016 levels. The high turnout could encourage more states to take similar steps ahead of the November general elections. Trump has resisted such efforts, even threatening last month to hold up federal funding to Michigan and Nevada over state election officials’ decisions to send mail-in ballot applications to registered voters.

National: Chaos in primary elections offers troubling signs for November | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Sometimes-chaotic primary elections across eight states and the District of Columbia foreshadowed challenges that could undermine the security and legitimacy of the general election in November. There were signs of dangerous shortcuts and workarounds, especially in the District where officials couldn’t get mail-in ballots out to everyone who requested them and resorted to accepting emailed ballots. Security experts warn such ballots are highly vulnerable to hacking because voters can’t verify they were recorded accurately. That was the biggest security concern on a night that was also marked by hours-long lines for in-person voting, last-minute extensions for absentee voting, and anxiety about going to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests against police violence, which prompted curfews in some places including Washington and Philadelphia. The good news was that Department of Homeland Security officials said they hadn’t seen any signs of cyberattacks or significant disinformation campaigns from Russia or elsewhere as of a midday briefing. But they warned that disinformation attacks in particular might take more time to identify. Overall, the day produced a middling report card for election officials, with one big note: Needs improvement before November.

National: Confusion, long lines at some poll sites as eight U.S. states vote during coronavirus pandemic | John Whitesides and Jarrett Renshaw/Reuters

Confusion, complaints of missing mail-in ballots and long lines at some polling centers marred primary elections on Tuesday in eight states and the District of Columbia, the biggest test yet of voting during the coronavirus outbreak. The most extensive balloting since the pandemic sparked lockdowns in mid-March served as a dry run for the Nov. 3 general election. It offered a glimpse of the challenges ahead on a national scale if that vote is conducted under a lingering threat from COVID-19. All of the states voting on Tuesday encouraged or expanded mail-in balloting as a safe alternative during the outbreak, and most sharply reduced the number of in-person polling places as officials struggled to recruit workers to run them. That led to record numbers of mail-in ballots requested and cast in many states, along with complaints over not receiving requested ballots and questions about where to vote after polling places were consolidated. Pennsylvania and three of the other states voting – Indiana, Maryland and Rhode Island – had delayed their nominating contests from earlier in the year to avoid the worst of the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 106,000 people in the United States. Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and the District of Columbia also voted on Tuesday.

National: Pandemic, Protests and Police: An Election Like No Other | Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

On the biggest day of voting since the coronavirus disrupted public life, Americans cast ballots in extraordinary circumstances on Tuesday, heading to the polls during a national health and economic crisis and amid the widespread protests and police deployments that have disrupted communities across the nation. The most high-profile race of the day produced a surprising result when Representative Steve King, the Iowa Republican who was ostracized by his party after questioning why white nationalism was offensive, lost his primary to Randy Feenstra, a state senator who had the tacit support of much of the state’s G.O.P. establishment. Mr. King is only the second congressional incumbent from either party to lose a bid for renomination in the 2020 primaries. The other was Representative Dan Lipinski of Illinois, a Democrat who lost a March primary to a more liberal challenger. But unlike Mr. Lipinski, Mr. King was defeated not because of his ideology but because his defense of white identity politics finally proved too toxic for his Republican colleagues to abide. In his campaign, Mr. Feenstra did not make an issue of Mr. King’s litany of racist remarks, but instead argued that his removal from House committees by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made Mr. King an ineffective congressman for Iowa.

National: ‘First Super Tuesday’ Of The COVID-19 Era: Voting Amid Protests, Pandemic | Miles Parks/NPR

Facing a pandemic that continues to spread through the United States and protests nationwide over the killing of another black man at the hands of police, voters headed to the polls Tuesday in more than half a dozen states. It’s a primary election date that was already going to be a challenge for election officials due to health concerns, even before nationwide unrest led to curfew orders in conflict with polling place hours in some places. In Washington, D.C., as well as the eight states voting Tuesday, the vast majority of ballots are expected to be mailed in. In Montana, for instance, election officials mailed every active registered voter a ballot. But the in-person voting options that are also required to be offered in many places create a unique problem. In Philadelphia, for instance, officials are trying to reassure voters they won’t be arrested for voting in the Pennsylvania primary if the city decides to extend a 6 p.m. curfew to Tuesday. Polling places will stay open in the city until 8 p.m. “Philly residents will not be arrested or prosecuted for going to or coming from voting tomorrow,” District Attorney Larry Krasner told NPR member station WHYY on Monday. “No curfew is going to interfere with any voter going to the polls. Please do not let these circumstances dissuade you.”

National: Mass upheaval and pandemic spell trouble for a megaday of primaries | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Holding an election in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic is tough. Holding an election as civil unrest sweeps across the country during that pandemic could be seriously problematic. Election officials will have to grapple with that challenge Tuesday, when voters in nine states and the District of Columbia vote by mail or head to the polls for primaries. Several cities set to hold an election have seen massive protests, at times spiraling into looting and violence. With widespread curfews keeping residents in their homes and some ballot-return locations shuttered, some voters could end up disenfranchised, voting rights activists warned. “We are particularly concerned about how the protests, and particularly the response to the protests, are going to affect voting,” said Suzanne Almeida, the interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. She cited two particular stress points: curfews and an increased police presence.

National: Voting by Mail to Face Biggest Test Since Pandemic Started | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Voting by mail will face its biggest test since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic when seven states and Washington, D.C., hold primaries Tuesday. All eight locales have encouraged residents to vote by mail, even as President Trump has criticized mail voting in recent tweets. Some states delayed their primaries due to the pandemic, then scrambled to change procedures and put personnel in place to process an expected surge in mailed ballots. Tuesday’s presidential primaries—in Indiana, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington, D.C.—offer little suspense since each political party already has a presumptive nominee. But state and local races are on ballots. And the voting will be an early test of how states might attempt to conduct elections if the virus remains a threat through the November general election. Five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah—conducted elections primarily by mail before the pandemic, with options for in-person voting and ballot drop-off sites as well. Last-minute court rulings and partisan fighting spread confusion leading up to Wisconsin’s primary in April, and there were delays for absentee ballots and hour-plus waits at a reduced number of polling places in Milwaukee.

National: Republicans Fear Trump’s Criticism of Mail Voting Will Hurt Them | Trip Gabriel/The New York Times

President Trump has relentlessly attacked mail voting, calling it a free-for-all for cheating and a Democratic scheme to rig elections. None of the charges are true. But as eight states and the District of Columbia vote on Tuesday in the biggest Election Day since the coronavirus forced a pause in the primary calendar, it is clear that Mr. Trump’s message has sunk in deeply with Republicans, who have shunned mail ballots. Republican officials and strategists warned that if a wide partisan gap over mail voting continues in November, Republicans could be at a disadvantage, an unintended repercussion of the president’s fear-mongering about mail ballots that could hurt his party’s chances, including his own. In Pennsylvania, Iowa, Indiana and New Mexico, all states voting on Tuesday that broadly extended the option to vote by mail this year, a higher share of Democrats than Republicans have embraced mail-in ballots. “If the Republicans aren’t playing the same game, if we’re saying we don’t believe in mail-in voting and are not going to advocate it,” said Lee Snover, the Republican chair of Northampton County in Pennsylvania, “we could be way behind.”

National: Election officials gear up for single biggest day of voting during coronavirus, as Trump rails against vote by mail | Kendall Karson and Meg Cunningham/ABC

President Donald Trump’s recent tirade against mail voting was a defiant attempt at elevating his argument of voter fraud — without evidence — but it comes as the largest single day of voting since the onset of the coronavirus crisis is set to take place next week. Even as Trump seeks to turn the issue into a pitched battle, election officials in a number of states, including those run by Republicans, are expanding access to the voting alternative as part of their broader preparations amid the pandemic for the June 2 election. The president, who has often railed against mail voting by alleging it is ripe for fraud, stepped up his assault last week by targeting efforts in two battleground states — Michigan and Nevada — aimed at making it easier to obtain an absentee or mail-in ballot. He threatened to cut off federal funding to those states over what he claimed were “illegal” tactics. Election officials in both states refuted Trump’s attacks, with a spokesperson for Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state calling Trump’s tweet “false,” and Nevada’s Republican secretary of state saying the shift to a mail-in election was done “legally.”

Editorials: Why We Need Postal Democracy | David Cole/The New York Review of Books

Nothing symbolizes democracy like long lines at the polls on election day. They represent a collective act of faith, as chances are virtually nil that any one of the votes we cast over our lifetime will determine the outcome of an election. They remind us that many of our fellow citizens have had to fight to stand in such lines. And because long lines are also often a sign that election officials have failed to provide sufficient voting opportunities, they illustrate the tenacity of citizens who insist on casting their ballots even when the government seems more interested in obstructing than in facilitating the franchise. Not since the civil rights era, when African-Americans in the South braved death threats to exercise their right to vote, has a voting line embodied this commitment more profoundly than on April 7 in Milwaukee. People lined up around the block, trying to maintain six-foot social-distancing intervals, to vote in what was a relatively unimportant election. At issue were only the all-but-concluded Democratic presidential primary, a single state supreme court seat, and a small number of lower state and local offices. At a time when their governor and mayor—both Democrats—had instructed them to shelter in place, these Milwaukee citizens had come out to stand in public for hours in order to exercise their constitutional right. The city, which ordinarily operates 180 polling places, opened only five, as poll workers balked at showing up. At least forty voters and poll workers may have contracted the coronavirus as a result.

National: Postal Service, beset by funding woes, faces new fight over mail-in voting | Max Greenwood/The Hill

Advocates and experts fear the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) could find itself caught in the crosshairs of the emerging partisan fight over mail-in voting. Democrats are pressing for increased funding for by-mail ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic, citing concerns about voters and workers congregating at polling stations. President Trump, meanwhile, threatened last month to block emergency COVID-19 assistance for the Postal Service if it did not raise its prices to cover a growing hole in its budget that could see the agency run out of money by end of the fiscal year. Trump reversed course late last week, vowing to “never let our Post Office fail.” His earlier remarks, however, raised alarm among state and federal officials and voting rights advocates, who see those warnings to the Postal Service as implicitly linked to the 2020 elections. Should the agency turn to layoffs or service reductions to cut costs, they argue, mail-in voting could be disrupted and millions of voters could be disenfranchised. “This is not and should not be a partisan or political issue. Both blue states and red states rely on the Postal Service to deliver ballots to and from voters,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, a Democrat, told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday. “We shouldn’t be playing politics with the postal service because it will disenfranchise and suppress voters.”

National: Partisan Fight Looms Over Voting by Mail | Lindsay Wise and Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Six months out from Election Day, Republicans and Democrats in Congress are headed for a showdown over expanding voting by mail, with Americans set to converge on the polls when experts say the coronavirus could remain a health threat. Democrats point to images of masked voters waiting in long lines to cast ballots in Wisconsin’s April 7 primary to argue that reducing in-person voting is crucial to public health. Wisconsin’s public health department says at least 52 people tested positive for Covid-19 after voting in person or working at a polling location on primary day, though several of those people reported multiple possible exposures. “Voting by mail is central to this in any event, but at the time of the coronavirus, very essential,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in a recent MSNBC interview. House Democrats are proposing $4 billion to enact a slew of policies that range from requiring states to enable online and same-day voter registration, to mandating prepaid postage on mail-in ballots, to a nationwide minimum of 15 consecutive days of early voting. Senate Democrats have proposed a similar, $3.6 billion plan.