Is Your State at Risk of an Election Meltdown?

This year, there have been at least 200 lawsuits across 43 states concerning election procedures and the pandemic.

Many of the cases are relatively narrow in scope, like requests from candidates to reduce the number of signatures needed to appear on the ballot. But some cases concern statewide voting rules and deadlines. As judges hand down decisions, it’s become difficult to keep track of what to expect in each state in the run-up to Election Day.

“There’s still a lot that’s up in the air,” said Lisa A. Bryant, a professor of political science at California State University, Fresno. “The more lawsuits there are, the more it delays the ability of local election administrators to plan for the election.”

All this litigation is a sign of how worried voters and political parties are about disenfranchisement and recounts. In an attempt to determine which states are at the highest risk of a meltdown, Times Opinion identified seven measures of election preparedness. Then we collected data for each measure to see where states stand.

Three of our indicators measure whether states are ready for an increase in mail voting, which is the biggest change confronting election officials this year. States that expanded mail voting in previous elections score well on our index.

States with the most red flags, like Arkansas and Georgia, are more likely to struggle with a deluge of mail ballots. Residents of those states may also run into trouble registering to vote and voting in-person.

10 states make it hard to register

The first step in ensuring a fair election is making sure that new voter registrations are processed correctly.

If a voter submits a registration on paper, election officials manually copy the voter’s personal information over to a digital database. It’s an error-prone task that’s often handled by temporary employees.

Online voter registration is more convenient for voters and has been shown to increase voter roll accuracy and turnout. Though Arizona adopted online registration as early as 2002, 10 states still make new voters submit paper registrations.

6 states will require most residents to vote in-person

During Wisconsin’s April primary, counties with more in-person voters had higher rates of coronavirus infections two to three weeks later, according to preliminary findings by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Ball State University.

Much has changed regarding coronavirus safety since April. Election officials are stockpiling masks, expanding early voting and minimizing contact with shared surfaces at polling locations. And most states will allow any registered voter to vote by mail.

But six states — Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — require a reason other than fear of the coronavirus to submit an absentee ballot.

Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at M.I.T. who runs the school’s Election Data and Science Lab, likens states that haven’t expanded mail voting to “holdouts during a hurricane evacuation,” who plan to “ride out” the storm.

“They’re not going to be ready,” Mr. Stewart said.

In each of the six states that have not expanded mail voting, at least 40 percent of residents still said they were “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to vote by mail this year, according to a nationwide survey conducted in July.

It remains to be seen if those people will request mail ballots anyway, providing false justifications for doing so and potentially setting the stage for disputed election results.

21 states might struggle with expanded mail voting

Data missing for some states’ shares of rejected mail ballots due to non-reporting or inconsistencies in reporting.

Among states that have expanded mail voting this year, there could be growing pains that lead to uncounted ballots.

One way to assess whether states might struggle is by looking at how many people voted absentee in the past. In 19 of the states that have expanded mail voting, fewer than 10 percent of voters voted by mail in 2018.

“Experience matters when it comes to mail voting,” said Daniel Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, who co-authored a recent study that found less experienced voters in Florida’s 2016 and 2018 elections were twice as likely to have their ballots rejected.

In states with expanded mail voting, the government will need to educate voters about how to request, fill out and submit absentee ballots that won’t be rejected because they were sent in too late or the voter’s signature doesn’t match the one that the state has on file for them.

In New York City, about 20 percent of mail ballots were rejected in the June primary this year. Mr. Stewart called New York’s rate “gobsmacking.”

If a race comes down to a couple of percentage points, even a small share of rejected mail ballots could lead to lawsuits or recounts. Eleven states that are expanding mail voting this year rejected more than 3 percent of mail ballots in 2018.

20 states could run into in-person voting snafus

Excluding states where more than half of survey respondents voted by mail for the wait time indicator. For poll worker ages, some jurisdictions did not report ages and others reported only the ages of election judges.

For in-person voters, long lines at the polls could discourage people from casting a ballot. Eight states made more than 5 percent of in-person voters wait at least half an hour to vote in 2016.

Trouble recruiting poll workers, who are often older and at higher risk of dying from Covid-19, could contribute to long lines at polling locations and delays in tallying absentee ballots. In 16 states, at least three out of every five poll workers in 2016 were older than 60.

During Wisconsin’s spring primary, a shortage of 7,000 poll workers caused the state to consolidate polling locations. The number of polling locations in Milwaukee alone dropped from 182 in the 2016 presidential election to five in the 2020 primary.

While primaries have lower turnout rates than general elections, researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice isolated the effect of the polling location closures in Milwaukee and found that they reduced turnout in the city by a third and disproportionately affected Black voters.

7 states’ voting machines are vulnerable to hacking

In a bipartisan report last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Russia targeted election systems in every state during the 2016 election. There was no evidence that any votes had been changed, but the committee recommended that states use voting machines that create a paper record of a voter’s choices, so that they can be audited to confirm digital tabulations.

Not every state has had the resources or political will to implement that recommendation. “We’ve been pushing for paper trails since 2003, but some states don’t take security issues as seriously as they should,” said David Dill, who founded Verified Voting, an election integrity organization.

In seven states, at least 15 percent of voters won’t have access to paper ballots or electronic machines that leave a paper trail.

While election security experts prefer electronic voting machines that leave a paper trail to those that don’t, the software that translates voters’ choices to paper records is still vulnerable to hacking. Voters who use those machines should check their printout to make sure that it reflects their selections.

And voting technology is only part of protecting an election’s integrity, said Mark Lindeman, who oversees technology and policy at Verified Voting. States should require audits of the results to ensure that the paper trail matches the electronic tabulations. “Audits are useful not only for the problems they find but also for the assurance that votes were counted correctly,” said Mr. Lindeman.

Tossup states

Scrutiny will be especially high in tossup states’ elections. “There has been more litigation in some of the fiercely contested battleground states. That’s not a coincidence,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University’s law school.

Among the 15 states that FiveThirtyEight forecasts as having more than a 1 percent chance of tipping the presidential election, Texas and Georgia have the most red flags. Georgia’s primaries this year went less than smoothly when new voting equipment wasn’t operational as polls opened, leading to wait times in excess of an hour.

As of Sept. 11. Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes, and only the state’s second district has more than a 1 percent chance of tipping the election, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Election meltdowns in Georgia, Wisconsin and New York may have a silver lining when it comes to the November election.

“Many states got kicked in the teeth in the primaries,” said Mr. Stewart, at M.I.T. “Jurisdictions have now had six months to plan, with administrative changes, changes to the laws and additional appropriations from state governments.”

Dana DeBeauvoir, a county clerk in Texas, said that her office “learned a lot of lessons” in the state’s July runoff election. Ms. DeBeauvoir, whose jurisdiction includes the city of Austin, said her office is planning to staff 10 lanes of drive-through ballot delivery for Texans who qualify for absentee voting due to their age or disabilities.

“No election administrator wants to be the example that’s used for long lines or missing ballots,” said Jan Leighley, a political scientist at American University.

Amidst all the uncertainty, election experts said there is one way that this year’s election will almost certainly differ from the one in 2016: We won’t have a clear picture who won many races, and potentially the presidency, at midnight on Election Day. The number of mail ballots that will arrive on Nov. 3 will take days or even weeks to count in some states.

“A delay might be a good sign,” said Ms. Leighley. “If it takes two weeks to count ballots fairly, accurately and with integrity, then let’s wait two weeks.”

In the event of a recount, both parties will send lawyers to contest every ballot. More concerning are all the different ways that people might be deterred from casting a valid vote in the first place. The experts that Times Opinion spoke with were both concerned and optimistic about election officials’ ability to make sure everyone who wants to vote is able to.

“I think that the overall story is going to be of states pulling it together and running a credible election,” said Mr. Stewart. “But there is a non-zero possibility that it turns into a mess.”

Source: Elections - nytimes.com