Jonathan Bernstein for Bloomberg Opinion:

There’s no question about it: Holding successful elections under current conditions is going to be difficult.

The good news is that a group of experts put together by election-law maven Rick Hasen, the Ad Hoc Committee for 2020 Election Fairness and Legitimacy, has thought through many of the major issues and published solid recommendations for getting it right this November. Now we’ll see whether politicians and the media will follow through.

How to work around the pandemic? What’s needed, Hasen’s group says, is an approach that allows for several methods of voting. Mail voting should be an important piece of this, and no-excuse absentee voting (meaning you don’t have to explain why you are casting your ballot that way) extended to those states that don’t have it. 

The overall strategy: “Having a diversity of avenues for voting — in-person, absentee, curbside, on-site at hospitals and other such facilities — enhances the stability of the system, maximizing the likelihood that elections may continue despite whatever unexpected threat emerges.” No one knows how difficult in-person voting will be by the fall, but states should prepare for the worst — and Congress should immediately provide emergency funding, with up to $2 billion needed. 

I’d support such spending because democracy is worth spending money on. If this perhaps idealistic reason isn’t enough, there’s sufficient practical justification for the U.S. to make sure its elections are run well. No one wants the uncertainty of an extended contested election with complaints like those we heard about the recent Wisconsin primary or the Iowa caucuses in February.