It was as gratifying as it was unexpected to watch Wisconsin’s Republican lawmakers — who have repeatedly ignored if not erased the political voices of their own constituents — take a drubbing at the hands of the voters themselves.
The state’s Republican leadership insisted on holding an election in the middle of a pandemic and a statewide stay-at-home order, knowing that the dilemma it posed would hit minorities and other Democratic-leaning voters hardest.
Yet Republicans still lost in the state’s marquee race. When the ballots were counted and the official results were reported on Monday, Jill Karofsky, the Democratic candidate for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court, had comfortably beaten her Trump-endorsed opponent, the incumbent, Justice Daniel Kelly.
Defying the pleas of voters, poll workers, public-health officials, the Democratic governor and Democratic lawmakers, Republican legislators forced Wisconsinites to make a choice between protecting their health and casting their ballot.
But thousands of voters turned out to stand in long, socially distanced lines to exercise the franchise. The election that should not have been held under these conditions nonetheless provides some useful lessons.
First, Wisconsin Republicans inadvertently demonstrated how destructive it is to hold an election in the middle of a pandemic without ensuring that voters have every possible opportunity to cast a ballot safely.
Turnout in Wisconsin was down significantly from 2016, especially in Milwaukee, which opened only five of its usual 180 polling places. Nearly 200,000 voters did not return absentee ballots they had requested — thousands because they received the ballot too late to be counted or never received it at all. That’s not including tens of thousands more who stayed home out of fear for their health and that of their loved ones.
We’ve yet to find out how many people who braved the elements on Election Day — which included rain and hail — were infected with the coronavirus or infected others.
Second, waiting a few days for election results is not the end of the world. Americans have grown accustomed to instant gratification on election night, as news outlets compete to declare a winner the moment polls close. But as Wisconsin’s six-day count showed, getting it right is much more important than getting it fast — especially when election officials have a far higher number of mail ballots to deal with.
Third, voting by mail is safe and secure, and enjoys bipartisan support across the country. In five states, including deep-red Utah, voters cast all or nearly all ballots by mail. In 28 others, including most of those considered swing states in the presidential contest, voters can request an absentee ballot for any reason.
Many Republican election officials are onboard, and even some Republican governors have gotten into the spirit. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire last week announced that voters there could cite the coronavirus as a reason to vote absentee, and Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska encouraged his residents to do the same. “It’s a great way for people to be able to vote” during a public-health crisis like the one we’re in, Governor Ricketts said. According to The Washington Post, Republican officeholders in at least 16 states are urging their citizens to vote absentee.
Even under normal circumstances, voting by mail helps one of the Republican Party’s most reliable constituencies — older voters, many of whom have trouble getting to the polls or standing in long lines. But mail voting is broadly popular wherever it’s used. In the 2016 presidential election, about a quarter of all votes nationwide were cast by mail.
Still, some Republicans — including the president, who himself votes absentee — continue to claim that voting by mail is a threat to democracy. “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting,” President Trump said this month, adding that it is “a terrible thing.”
When asked to provide any evidence to support his claim, Mr. Trump said, “We’re going to find out about the proof.”
Mr. Trump has also tried to turn mail voting into a partisan issue, claiming that it benefits only Democrats. Again, not true.
Here’s what is true: Any widely used voting method must be both accessible and secure. That’s possible to achieve amid the current crisis with nationwide mail voting, but only if states start preparing immediately and only if Congress gives them the money to do it. The $400 million that has been allocated so far is a small fraction of what is needed.
How could that money be used? For starters, to ensure that state voting rolls are as accurate as possible and that every registered voter receives, at the very least, an application for a mail ballot — although it would be better to send the ballot itself. The money could be used to pay for the printing of enough ballots and envelopes for every registered voter. According to print vendors, orders for ballots and envelopes would need to be placed by early summer to be filled in time for November’s election. And the money could also be used to pay the postage on all those envelopes, so that we don’t institute a modern-day poll tax.
Speaking of postage, the government needs to stop playing games and fund the Postal Service, which is of course essential to a successful vote by mail.
And what about security? It’s true that mail voting has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. The good news is that states like Oregon and Colorado, where nearly all voting is done by mail, run extremely secure elections, thanks to common-sense measures.
For example, bar codes help ensure that ballots are coming from the voters they were sent to, and new ballot-tracking software allows voters to check whether their filled-out ballots were successfully delivered. Ballots with signatures that don’t match a voter’s file don’t get counted, but voters whose ballot is rejected should have the chance to resolve that issue. Voters can also place their filled-out ballots in secure, video-monitored drop boxes. In short, none of this is rocket science, but states without existing mail-voting systems need to get going right away.
Far more dangerous than individual voter fraud, which is always very rare, is the potential hacking of voter rolls by hostile countries like Russia and China. That could disenfranchise large numbers of eligible voters. To minimize this risk, voter rolls should be up-to-date, and offline copies should be saved regularly to check against any suspicious changes.
States need money for all of this, as well as for expanding online registration so that those who have been displaced by the pandemic can vote even if they are living somewhere new. And states need to adopt at least two weeks of early voting, to keep polling places from getting overcrowded.
No voting method is free of error, of course, and there will surely be missteps — ballots lost, voters wrongly rejected for a signature mismatch — but what is the alternative? The coronavirus doesn’t care about the electoral calendar.
In a time of profound uncertainty, that’s one thing we know for sure: There will be a presidential election in November, along with thousands of critical federal, state and local elections. Americans are going to need the ability to vote by mail at unprecedented levels.
The states must be ready, and Congress needs to approve election-related spending now, and certainly in the next stimulus bill. An initial estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice put the cost at $2 billion, but that’s for the general election alone. States are still paying to run primaries and other elections through the spring, which means the full cost for 2020 is probably closer to $4 billion. As the price of helping to save American democracy, it’s a bargain.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
