If Sanders and Biden want an immediate joint project, they can unite in pointing to the dangers to the election process itself, brought home by Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision to cancel in-person voting in Ohio primary on Tuesday. DeWine argued that opening the polls would undermine efforts to contain the coronavirus.AD
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on MSNBC that he believed DeWine, a Republican, acted “in totally good faith,” but expressed worry about “any precedent” the cancellation might set. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, made the second point more sharply, telling me that “this is the Trump era, when old rules don’t always apply and outrageous things occur with regularity.”
Guaranteeing that the virus will not be used in the fall as a pretext to disrupt the election should be a key component of any broad stimulus bill. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), along with election specialist Rick Hasen of the University of California at Irvine, have proposed that all states offer unrestricted absentee voting and mail-in ballots, with the effort funded by the federal government.