New from the Bipartisan Policy Center:
State and local election administrators across the country are planning for voting in primaries and the November general election during the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. These officials are guided by the deeply held belief that every eligible voter be afforded a safe opportunity to vote. Election administrators are drafting realistic contingency plans for voting in real-time. They do not, however, have the power to implement these plans without state policymakers who may need to adjust, at least temporarily, state requirements to make voting work during a public health crisis.
Policymakers need to understand the full breadth of issues that can arise throughout the remainder of the primary season and the general election campaign if election administrators are not given the room to be flexible and meet voters where they are.
The authors come to the opinions in this document from decades of experience. Christopher Thomas was the state election director for Michigan for 36 years and served as a commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013. Matthew Weil has served on the research team at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and is the director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which is responsible for the BPC Task Force on Elections.
The BPC Task Force on Elections released a full report in January 2020 on policy recommendations that would modernize the entire election ecosystem. Those recommendations remain relevant for states considering even temporary changes to confront this year’s unexpected crisis.
There is limited time left this year to make sure election administrators have the support they need from policymakers to ensure a free and fair election. This document focuses on considerations for accessing the ballot, most specifically via vote by mail. The extent to which states will expand voting by mail varies based on many factors. States that choose to push more voters toward this option must address policy, implementation, and capacity issues on an extraordinarily short timeline. Separate documents from the Bipartisan Policy Center will focus on new concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic about registering to vote and how votes will be counted.
We submit that this should be considered the starting point for state-level policymakers. These include secretaries of state, who are the most common chief election official, but also state election boards and governors who may have a say in changes to voting in their states. These executive and legislative branch leaders must confront thorny policy problems in the months to come if voting rules will be clear come November.
Regardless of what decisions are made, we strongly believe by November there will be high voter interest in the presidential election; voting by mail will likely represent well over half the ballots cast; and some amount of Election Day voting will continue but may be very different than normal….