Just over three months before the November election, supporters supporting both President Trump
Donald John Trump Biden to pay tribute to Lewis on Capitol Hill Monday. Cotton asked for comments on slavery in criticism of the 1619 Draft Congress slated for disorderly COVID-19 talks on a tight deadline. and former vice president Joe Biden
Joe BidenBiden to pay tribute to Lewis on Capitol Hill on Monday Trump lashes out at the Reagan Foundation after fundraising request Trump’s approval of coronavirus management reaches a new low level MORE They are increasingly anxious about what they see as the growing potential for a chaotic contest marred by voters deprived of their rights, missteps, and mountains of litigation.
The new anxiety adds to the typical nerves that affect campaign operatives. Republicans are increasingly concerned that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis has postponed so many voters that his path to reelection is being precipitously curtailed. Democrats are almost universally convinced that Biden’s electoral leadership is a mirage, a possible repeat of the 2016 calamity that they did not see coming.
But a series of quieter developments have people on both sides nervous that Election Day may bring a series of unpredictable disasters.
As the pandemic spread across the country in recent months, states encouraged, and voters embraced, mailing ballots. In some states that already make their elections almost entirely by mail, the added volume has been simple enough to handle.
For other states with less experience operating mail ballots, the influx has caused maddening delays. More than a month after New York held its primary election, at least one Democratic race, between the Rep. Carolyn Maloney
Carolyn Bosher MaloneyLawyers press Lockheed to pay the Pentagon for F-35 problems Trump threatens to duplicate Portland in other major cities Rand Paul: “There is no place” for the feds “to arrest people at will” Portland MORE (D) and Suraj Patel, a former staff member of the Obama administration, is not yet finalized. The New York Board of Elections has yet to count 65,000 ballots in the contest.
Voting contests in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and California were marred by delays, long lines, and slow counts. And those were primary elections, where voter turnout is less than it will be in the November general elections.
“Many states are unprepared for the avalanche of absentee ballots due to the virus or difficulties recruiting poll workers and otherwise making in-person voting effective in November,” said Rick Hasen, an electoral law expert at the University of California-Irvine and author of “Election Merger: Dirty Tricks, Mistrust, and the Threat to American Democracy.”
At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic has made postal voting a more palatable option for voters across the country, and has also put unprecedented pressure on the agency that is supposed to deliver those ballots, the US Postal Service. the United States.
The USPS, which is already experiencing a fiscal crisis, has experienced massive revenue losses during the pandemic. The Postal Service is likely to run out of money by the end of September unless Congress acts. And Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a close ally of President Trump, who is a well-known Postal Service skeptic, is pushing for changes to operations that could delay mail delivery, a delay that could deprive voters who wait too long to return their ballots.
Even without the changes, USPS has come under scrutiny for inadvertent errors that led to vote deprivation. About 1,600 ballots cast in a Wisconsin election in April were discovered at a Chicago mail processing center the morning after Election Day. Thousands of voters in that election did not even receive the absentee ballots they requested. In Ohio, 317 ballots cast in the April 28 primaries reached the Butler County Board of Elections after a state-imposed deadline.
“Those who wait until the last minute to request and send their absent ballots run the risk of being deprived of their rights, not through some kind of infamous plot but through incompetence and high volume,” Hasen said in May. .
Ballots that go back in time are still subject to rejection. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have been rejected in primary elections across the country, because the signatures were missing or did not match those in the files of election officials, or because they were mailed incorrectly.
Election officials in Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio rejected more than 1 percent of the ballots mailed this year. More than 20 percent of absentee ballots are being rejected in parts of New York City, a surprisingly high number.
Slow counts, in particular, threaten to force mainstream media outlets to rethink the way they cover Election Night. In a typical election, after the polls close, data analysts at corporate headquarters in New York and Washington analyze the numbers at the precinct level to try to project the ultimate winner, and the on-screen graphs show how many venues have reported .
But those precinct reporting numbers and precinct-level results mean much less if half of a precinct’s ballots are in a mail container, unopened and not counting when the polls actually close.
“We will not have an election night this year. Each major race will take days or weeks to decide. It’s going to make people nervous and it’s going to be a complete mess, ”said Sean Noble, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “County recorders will be under a microscope and almost none of them will be prepared for that type of scrutiny.”
Two years ago, a critical Senate race in Arizona was not decided for days, as election officials waded through a large number of absentee ballots. What had started as a small advantage for Republicans Martha McSally
Martha Elizabeth McSally100 days: Democrats see clear path to majority in Senate Biden leads Trump, Kelly leads McSally in Arizona: Cook’s poll poll report shifts several Senate races to Democrats MORE ended as a victory for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
Republicans and Democrats fear that scenario will repeat itself this year, with one crucial difference: McSally graciously admitted when it became clear that the numbers were not on his side. Trump, who is already raising unfounded questions about the integrity of an election that has yet to take place, is more likely to use his Twitter feed to air sprinkles on legitimate charges that simply take longer than usual.
“Unless there is a significantly clear and almost super-majority result on one side, that is, on the Biden side, I’m afraid things will deteriorate rapidly,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in North Carolina. “The president’s recent comments do not ensure that the outcome, especially one against him, is not questioned, and we know that the Republican base is loyal to an almost flawed line in our policy.”
It is not even clear that the rules for holding an election today will be the same under which the November elections are held. Democratic groups are suing election administrators over election procedures in at least 20 states, for everything from mail-in ballot deadlines to absentee ballot access and collection laws.
The lawsuits, most of which are overseen by Marc Elias, the leading electoral lawyer in Democratic circles, have already yielded results in some states. The group has won cases in 23 states in recent years, changing the rules on redistricting, district voting, and voter registration.
Both Democrats and Republicans have already invested tens of millions of dollars in unprecedented legal challenges, and all signs indicate that a new round of lawsuits is almost certain by the time the polls close.
“If Bush v. Gore in 2000 were an indication, and with twenty years of deepening and hardening political polarization, legal threats and public outrage at the delayed results could make this year’s election season even worse.” more poisonous, “Bitzer said.
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