The coronavirus countdown clock is running now that the acting president’s underwhelming Tulsa rally is over. After the Trump campaign bragged that over a million people had requested tickets for his event at a venue that holds 19,000, Andrew Little, spokesperson for the Tulsa Fire Department told Forbes that only 6,200 actually attended. It appears the Trump campaign got punked by a Fort Dodge, Iowa grandmother and teen users of TikTok.
What we will be watching for over the next week or so is how many of those unmasked Trumpers and Oklahoma residents with whom they interacted contract the coronavirus. How dangerous their choice to attend was could impact how other Americans vote this fall.
Among the choices voters in most states will have to make is how to vote, meaning by what method. Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — hold all-mail elections. The rest offer a combination of methods. Voters may vote absentee-by-mail or in-person via early voting or on Tuesday, November 3. The particular voting machinery states and localities use is not up to the voter. Yet, amidst this deadly global pandemic, voters will need to weigh the health risks associated with each method against the chances their votes will be counted.
Already, election boards are bracing for a flood of absentee ballots and worrying about how to process them. Scrutiny by teams of examiners is involved before ballots are accepted.
While voting absentee-by-mail may decrease the chances of contracting the coronavirus, it increases the chances your vote will not count.
The Washington Post reported last month:
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, of the more than 140 million votes cast in the 2016 general election, 23.7 percent were via mail. Of the roughly 33.2 million mail ballots that election administrators received and tabulated, approximately 1 percent weren’t counted. Reasons for rejection include “the signature on the ballot not matching the signature on the state’s records,” “the ballot not having a signature,” a “problem with return envelope,” or “missing the deadline.” By contrast, a third fewer ballots cast in person were rejected in 2016.
Even in states where voters have had several years’ experience in voting by mail, such as in Washington, Oregon and Colorado, mail ballots get rejected. In the 2016 election, 0.81 percent of Colorado’s mail ballots were rejected; in Oregon, 0.86 percent; and in Washington, 0.90 percent. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of ballots mailed to voters that were returned as undeliverable.
Note: “returned undeliverable” does not mean that voter did not cast a ballot by other means.
Voters this fall will have to weigh their chances of contracting a potentially lethal virus or waiting in lines so long that they may leave without voting against the one-percent chance that their mailed vote will not count.
In its review of mailed ballots in Georgia’s 2018 midterm elections, the Post found “younger voters, people of color and first-time voters” were more likely to have their mailed ballots rejected “either because of an error on the return envelope or because they arrived after Election Day.” Errors on the envelope could mean lack of a signature, lack of a witness, or the signature on the ballot envelope not matching the signature on the absentee ballot application form. Richard Salame of The Intercept examines what can go wrong with that process and the inconsistent way states train examiners to identify signatures as nonmatching.
There are ways to avoid some of the potential pitfalls. Especially the mail delivery problem. Amber McReynolds, director of elections for the City and County of Denver, found that 80 percent of voters mailed ballots in 2016 dropped them off rather than depend on the mail.
Election results come down to turnout and turnout to having a ground game. Which major party is nimble enough to mount an effective one in the middle of a pandemic remains as unclear as how many of Trump’s rallygoers will turn up sick in the next two weeks. We are in terra incognita.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.