Jessica Huseman for ProPublica:

There are only six states where election officials have the authority both to delay an election and shift polling places, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In six others, they can only reschedule an election, and in 18, their powers are limited to relocating poll sites. In Massachusetts and Idaho, secretaries of state, who generally oversee elections, have pressed unsuccessfully for more emergency clout. Opponents questioned the wisdom of vesting too much authority over an election in any one individual, and contended that, since democracy depends on regular voting at predictable intervals, arrangements for postponement should not be overly nimble.

“Election officials have literally zero authority,” said Amber McReynolds, CEO of Vote at Home, a nonprofit that helps policymakers and election officials improve their vote by mail processes and policies. “An issue that this pandemic has exposed is the lack of agility with respect to elections.”

The impotence of state election officials forces governors and legislators with no experience running elections to make choices that they don’t understand the implications of, said David Levine, the Elections Integrity Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. “Short of a compelling reason otherwise, election officials need to have the ability to act quickly so that the accessibility and the integrity and the security of the vote aren’t questioned,” he said.