The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly transforming this year's elections, changing the way tens of millions of people cast ballots and putting thousands of election officials at the center of a pitched political fight as they rush to adapt with limited time and funding.
In a watershed moment for American voting, nearly 30 states have changed rules or practices for this year's primaries or the general election in response to the public health threat posed by covid-19, according to a tally by The Washington Post. The new policies affect roughly 86.6 million registered voters -- including more than 40 million people who now have the temporary right to cast an absentee ballot because of the virus.
This striking shift in the voting landscape encompasses nearly every part of the country, red and blue states alike. But with November less than six months away, the largely bipartisan wave of change has been hit by political turbulence as President Donald Trump raises doubts about the security of voting by mail and threatens to punish states where Democratic leaders are facilitating it.
Battles over voting in the age of the coronavirus are defining the 2020 presidential cycle, with intense partisan fights over the rules erupting in states such as Wisconsin and Texas. The outcome will shape how easy it will be for people to cast their ballots in November -- and in some cases, whether certain mail-in votes will be counted.
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As more than two dozen legal battles wend their way through the courts, local and state officials are racing to figure out how to administer the election amid the health crisis, propelled by an unyielding calendar.
"There's so much debate in Washington, particularly as a result of comments from the president, around the questions: 'Are people going to be voting by mail?' 'Should they be allowed to vote by mail?' And the fact of the matter is, they're doing it," said Larry Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
"The election officials have to essentially create a new infrastructure for handling that," Norden added. "They prepared for one election and got another."
This year, more than 168 million of the nation's nearly 198 million registered voters are eligible to vote absentee in either midyear contests or the general election.
In the fall, the country could see a huge surge in mail voting compared to 2016, when more than 33 million ballots were cast absentee or sent in by mail for the general election, about 24% of the vote, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
The process has already been messy and costly, posing challenges for local election clerks, the Postal Service and voters trying to navigate the shifting rules.
The next big test will come June 2, when eight states and the District of Columbia are holding primaries. At the same time, many jurisdictions are facing looming deadlines to order ballot materials and specialty equipment for the general election.
"We're all looking at it like this is our dry run and multiplying it by what could happen in November," said Roxanna Moritz, auditor for Scott County, Iowa, of the June 2 contests in her state, which has seen a spike in requests for absentee ballots. "As soon as we're finished, we're in a dead heat."
ABSENTEE VOTING
Starting with Louisiana on March 13, more than a dozen states postponed primaries. Officials cited a number of practical challenges arising from the pandemic, including elderly poll workers withdrawing from their jobs out of concern for their health and a shortage of sanitizing equipment for polling places.
Since then, state leaders from both parties have announced decisions to facilitate absentee voting for people who fear contracting the coronavirus by casting ballots in person.
This national shift has drawn comparisons to other periods of large-scale transformation in U.S. voting, such as the overhaul that followed the 2000 presidential election debacle, which set new minimum standards for election administration and provided federal funding to replace aging voting equipment.
While only a handful of states have made decisions about how they will hold their elections in November, many have already put in place a wide range of changes for their midyear contests, The Post's review found.
Eleven states that require an excuse to vote absentee have announced that voters may cast ballots by mail for the primaries this year if they are concerned in-person voting will make them sick. These decisions temporarily make voting by mail accessible to more than 40 million people.
Another 12 states and the District of Columbia are proactively sending absentee ballot applications or request forms to voters specifically because of the coronavirus. Roughly 34.7 million people will receive the forms, according to state figures on registered and active voters.
In the most controversial move, four states -- Maryland, Montana, Nevada and New Jersey -- are proactively sending absentee ballots for the primaries to approximately 11.3 million voters in the coming months. They join five states that already mail ballots to voters.
Critics say this practice substantially increases the risk of ballot fraud. Proponents argue that with the right safeguards, such as signature requirements and verification measures, mailing ballots is secure.
ALTERING THE ELECTION
Just four states have so far changed their voting rules for the November general election, but many more are expected to join them in the coming weeks, as officials confront deadlines for ballot printing orders and purchases of equipment like high-capacity ballot scanners.
In New Hampshire, people concerned about contracting the coronavirus will be allowed to cast absentee ballots, a decision affecting roughly 875,000 registered voters. Connecticut and Michigan will send absentee ballot applications to about 8.7 million voters in those two states.
And in California, more than 20 million voters will receive actual absentee ballots in the mail.
Trump has balked as states having made voting by mail easier, claiming that it will lead to fraud and hurt Republican candidates.
The president triggered the latest public conflict on Wednesday when he threatened to "hold up" federal funding for Michigan and Nevada because the states are lowering barriers to absentee voting this year, claiming that such moves are illegal.
Later, he told reporters that he believes voting by mail encourages "forgeries," "duplication" and "thousands and thousands of fake ballots."
Experts say that while mail voting poses a risk if there are not safeguards in place to protect the chain of custody of ballots, episodes of election fraud have been rare, and there is not evidence to support Trump's claims that it has caused widespread cheating.
Information for this article was contributed by Lenny Bronner and Scott Clement of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/24/2020