Greg Sargent in WaPo:

All states allow vote by mail in certain circumstances, and this trend has been advancing here and there. But what Wyden is envisioning is something much broader: a federal mandate that states make this option fully available, if one quarter of them declare an emergency requiring it.

As voting rights expert Ari Berman noted, if this is going to happen, the states will have to start preparing right now. There are good voting access reasons for this: People may be reluctant to vote because they fear coronavirus, and that’s a terrible choice for folks to have to make.

But there’s another reason this may end up being important: It centers on poll workers, who tend to be seniors. You’ve all seen the elderly-but-civically-committed volunteers at your local polling place. Now they may be reluctant to serve, given that their advanced years may subject them to heightened health risks.