Protecting Voting During COVID-19
Protecting Voting During COVID-19
There may be only one Democratic candidate for president left, but that doesn’t mean there aren't other vital primary and special elections across the country that need to be protected from harm. The safety of voters and election staff matters more than ever during this time of deadly pandemic, and so does the safety of voting itself. Without swift action to bolster stay-at-home voting mechanisms and beef up public hygiene measures at polling places, millions of votes could be lost in this crucial election year. States that haven’t already done so need to a) postpone their spring primaries and b) use this time to figure out COVID-19 workarounds for primaries and the general election that won’t suppress turnout.
It would help if the president, the Supreme Court and Republican lawmakers weren’t working hard to fight what they consider to be a virulent enemy more dangerous than COVID-19: voting. This powerful three-pronged team has already made it clear that any attempt at extending mail-in voting rights will be discouraged. Such was the case in Wisconsin last week, when polling places were kept open during the public health emergency — exposing election workers, voters and facility managers to the highly contagious coronavirus. Following a 5-4 ruling along party lines, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority wrote, in an unsigned decision, that a six-day absentee ballot extension “fundamentally alters the nature of the election” and was not legal. Scores of polling stations in Wisconsin had already been shuttered due to coronavirus fears, resulting in epic lines of people risking their health to make their voices heard, and thousands of potential voters staying home out of fear for their lives and the lives of others.
New York’s Primary Has Been Moved to June, and Absentee Voting Rights in the State Have Been Extended to All
Seventeen states and territories have postponed their primaries so far due to the spread of coronavirus. In late March, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York State will push its previously scheduled April 28 presidential primary to June 23, combining it with the state’s congressional and state primaries and several special elections. Cuomo’s executive order follows the recommendation of voting rights advocates and county election officials, who agreed that the end of April was way too soon to ask New Yorkers to come to the polls. The rate of COVID-19 infection in New York remains alarming and the state’s lockdown measures continue grow in scope. In New York City alone, the number of fatalities has already topped 12,000.
In addition, the governor signed another executive order in April that will allow all New Yorkers to vote by absentee ballot on June 23 — a welcome change in a state that has some of the tightest restrictions in the country on absentee voting.
And while these are necessary first steps, much more needs to be done to ensure engagement is robust. Here are some of the emergency measures New York needs to put in place now to ensure as close to full voter participation as possible on June 23 and November 3.
Pass Legislation Allowing All Voters to Register Online
Right now, the only way for New York State residents to register to vote online is through the state’s DMV website — and then only if they have a New York-issued driver’s license or ID. Anyone without a current New York identification card must register the old-fashioned way: by mail or in person. This presents a major barrier to registration in any election year, but especially now during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The fact that there isn’t universal access to online registration has long been an anachronistic slap in the face to residents of New York City. Unlike most upstate residents, Gothamites rely heavily on public transportation, with only 55% of New York City residents owning a driver’s license. And, given the city’s long-standing attraction to people from far and wide, many of them have licenses from out of state.
In 2018, a new online registration platform open to all New Yorkers, regardless of DMV records, was constructed by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent, nonpartisan agency. A week before the site was set to go live, the city’s Board of Elections (BOE) voted to railroad it, and it still lies dormant. The BOE claimed that the digital signatures allowed by the new online portal would conflict with state law. Handwritten signatures would still need to be obtained, they said, regardless of the new system. The board’s commissioners said that voter registration applications submitted through the new website would have to be printed out by BOE staff, mailed to each applicant for a handwritten signature, then mailed back to the board for final approval. This would more than double the time it currently takes for non-DMV applicants to register to vote, defeating the purpose of the online initiative.
This is why there is now an urgent call to pass bill S6463 / A8473 in the New York State Legislature. The bill, co-sponsored by State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assemblymember Michael Blake, would make online registration — complete with electronic signatures — totally legit in New York City. Passing it would open the door to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who want to vote in the June 23 primary and in the November general election. The bill has yet to come up for a vote — which is one of the reasons the New York State Legislature needs to commit to staying in session remotely, something it has yet to do.
Getting Absentee Ballots to Everyone
Before the pandemic, if you wanted to vote absentee in New York, you had to prove that you were physically ill, disabled, caring for someone who was ill or disabled, in jail awaiting a grand jury decision, in prison on a non-felony conviction, or outside your county of residence on Election Day. Governor Cuomo’s recent executive order now allows all New York voters to vote by absentee ballot in the June 23 primary without providing evidence of one of the above qualifications. According to the order, “an absentee ballot can be granted based on temporary illness and shall include the potential for contraction of the COVID-19 virus.” This temporary reprieve circumvents the need to pass an amendment to the New York State constitution, a legislative process that could take two years or more.
On Monday, Governor Cuomo indicated that he would go even further in making absentee voting available. He said he would soon be issuing an executive order that would see absentee ballot applications automatically mailed to every registered New York voter — no request required. That’s a huge deal, since his original April 9 order still required voters to request an absentee ballot through the mail or online. However, it’s important to remember that this is still just a short-term fix, as the order only applies to the June 23 election, and not to the general election in November.
Advocates say the state still needs to change the mail-in deadlines for completed absentee ballots. Currently, state law says these ballots must be received by Election Day. Advocate groups like Let New York Vote want the law changed to allow absentee ballots to be postmarked by Election Day. The state must also agree to provide prepaid return envelopes for absentee ballots, to relieve New Yorkers from having to get stamps or go to the post office during the COVID-19 pause.
Fund the State’s Infrastructure for Absentee Voting, Early Voting and In-Person Voting
The governor’s latest announcement on the automatic mailing of absentee ballot applications is a welcome one, but also presents a number of practical challenges. This type of mass mailing is a huge undertaking, since absentee ballots require printing on special tamper-resistant paper, individualized bar codes and prepaid return envelopes. Mailing absentee ballots to every New York voter (approximately 14 million people) would also require the New York State Board of Elections to have up-to-date address records — definitely not something it’s known for. The board was recently taken to court over its reliance on bad post office and third-party address data to remove thousands of registered voters from the rolls. Emailing could come in as a backup system for getting absentee ballots to voters, though that too presents a lot of opportunity for error.
Implementing a never-before-seen level of voting by mail presents quite a conundrum for New York State. Though some believe conducting our elections solely by mail will be the best way to ensure COVID-safe voting, others say states like New York just aren't ready to go 100% absentee, and that eliminating in-person voting entirely would be a disaster.
Prior to the COVID crisis, just 5% of New York State residents voted absentee owing to the state’s restrictive health, absence or incarceration criteria. Election offices are not set up to handle a huge surge in absentee ballots this summer and fall. Funds, time and labor are needed to print and send the ballots. The state must also take extra measures to make sure the health of postal workers and election staff are protected, while also safeguarding voters from having their ballots lost or unfairly discarded. (Again, New York’s record in counting all the votes cast is far from stellar.). To make a major uptick in mail-in voting remotely possible, money would have to be poured by the bucketful into county election boards and into the U.S. Postal Service. Given the revenue crisis caused by the coronavirus, these agencies are unlikely to get the resources they need. New York, as well as many other states without a long-standing vote-by-mail infrastructure, will have little choice but to keep in-person voting in place.
One solution suggested by Common Cause New York is to use our closed schools as polling sites. Setting up polls in empty school gyms during the June voting window could provide a socially responsible solution to in-person voting, the good-governance group says — if handled with the utmost care. They recommend having police officers at every poll location to help maintain a six-foot distance between voters, staff and volunteers. Polling places must also be required to provide disposable pens for filling out paper ballots (or disposable cotton swabs for counties that allow touchscreen voting), tempered glass coverings for electronic poll books (which are easier to clean than standard touchscreens), glue sticks for sealing affidavit ballot envelopes (rather than voters’ tongues), and thorough, repeated disinfecting of facilities and surfaces.
And with social distancing a key factor in getting people out to vote in person, we need to have more early voting locations. Last fall, New York State rolled out its first-ever early voting program with a bare minimum of approved sites. Only 61 early voting sites were made available in New York City — far too few for a town with nearly 9 million people and 4.5 million registered voters. And many of these locations were inconveniently located for residents. One way to get more people to vote early during the coronavirus is to double the number of locations and days for early voting, and expand poll hours across the board.
Pressure Congress to Provide Way More Federal Funding for Elections
We need to call and email our Washington reps on this. Congress has to do way more to help states run our elections during this crisis. The most recent iteration of the CARES Act, passed at the end of March, set aside a mere $400 million to help states reconfigure their elections during the pandemic. It’s a sum that will not cover the cost of even the most barebones voting initiatives. And, as part of a stipulation pushed by the Senate’s Republican majority, states must pledge 20% in matching funds to qualify for their portion of the $400 million.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer succeeded in securing $20 million for his home state, but under the present terms, New Yorkers would have to cough up $4 million just to get it. With resources for hospitals and health care stretched beyond their limits, and morgues piling up with bodies across the tri-state area, New York can’t easily afford to pay this $4 million fee — a fact Republicans are likely banking on. Voting advocate groups are calling on Senator Schumer and members of the House Appropriations Committee to drop the matching funds stipulation from the bill, and to up the election bailout total to at least $4 billion nationwide.
On that note, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced a bill on Thursday that would provide $5 billion in election funding. The VoteSafe Act of 2020 would provide $2.5 billion to states to build out their absentee voting infrastructure and provide more in-person voting locations. Another $2.5 billion would be earmarked as discretionary funding for states to ensure accessibility and safe distancing measures at polls. The VoteSafe Act would also require a minimum of 20 days of early voting in the November election in every state (New York currently only requires nine days), as well as the implementation of universal no-excuse absentee voting. However, given the recent Supreme Court action in Wisconsin, and with the president telling voters that mail-in voting is bad because it would prevent Republicans from getting elected, the bill will remain little more than a show piece. That is, unless Republican voters come to see it as essential and proceed to put pressure on their leaders to pass it (excuse me, looking up “long shot” as we speak.) But that doesn’t mean our calls, emails and letters to our congressional reps aren’t essential to keeping the pressure on to give state elections real money for this do-or-die election year.
Shift the Expectation That Votes Need to Be Tallied Up in a Single Day
“Democracy takes time,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, recently told a Zoom forum of organization members. And counting votes is going to take more time than usual under the given circumstances. The large expected uptick in absentee voting will make same-day totals impossible, and Americans are going to have to forgo their craving for immediate results. The 24-hour news media, Lerner believes, bears some responsibility for enabling this expectation. What’s needed is an outreach campaign to encourage and normalize patience — something very few Americans are raised with or taught to embrace. Keeping the doors open longer, allowing time for mail to get delivered, and making sure every vote is counted accurately — we’re all going to need to Zen out during the wait and not put pressure on election boards to rush a result.
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