Despite ramping up capacity and working overtime, mail-in ballot vendors like Runbeck have been struggling to meet the needs of every state and county knocking on their doors. Along with COVID-19-related disruption to their supply chains, companies that print and stuff ballots or make ballot inserters, openers, sorters, trackers and scanners have had to grapple with unprecedented demand for postal voting tech, buzzer-beater deadlines and a flurry of court cases deciding who will even be allowed to vote by mail and where and when.
Already, Runbeck has printed more ballots in the last two months than it did in all of 2016. In some cases, it’s been forced to turn business away. Ellington said Runbeck, which stuffs ballots for the entire state of Georgia as well as counties in seven other states, had to pull out of a bid to work with the state of Maryland and didn’t even bother bidding on contracts for New Jersey and South Carolina, which have both faced federal lawsuits over mail-in ballots. “The lawsuits and delays handcuff the counties from making a plan,” Ellington said.
In fact, nearly every vendor Protocol spoke with reported having to turn business down because of demand and delays. “In many jurisdictions, it’s likely too late [to procure machines] at this point,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.