This came through my email today and it all sounds very sensible to me so I thought I’d pass it along:
I wanted to give a bit more context on what’s going on around the country with election administration and what folks can do in the coming weeks and months to ensure every eligible Americans’ vote will be counted. The bottom-line is that the story about USPS doesn’t change the key goals that we have in the next few months. Ironically, it does create greater public awareness and urgency around many of these pieces, which can actually be helpful.
As it has become clear that Americans will need to vote this November while still in the midst of a pandemic, there have been several interconnected goals:
- Maximize Mail Ballots – Through policy action, administrative changes, and civic engagement, ensure as many Americans as possible are teed up to receive mail ballots to minimize burden on in-person voting.
- Protect Safe In-Person Options – Sufficient locations, PPE, compliance with social distancing will all require intentionality by local administrators and plenty of available poll workers.
- Get Votes Cast as Early As Voters Can – Early mail return and attempts to vote in-person give us plenty of time to correct any issues and ensure those ballots are accurately counted.
The vast majority of state and local election officials (including many in both parties) are doing everything they can to make this election go smoothly, but their offices are underfunded even as they are implementing an historic number of election administration changes in record time. 21 states have expanded access to vote-by-mail for November (NY, notably, has not yet taken action but presumably will). Against this backdrop, we have some risks:
- Late Voter Registration / Vote-by-Mail Forms – Historically, many Americans wait until deadlines to update their voter registration or request mail ballots. In primaries so far, later applications have been fulfilled late and had much lower turnout rates and more challenges voting.
- Insufficient Poll Workers – Election officials report longtime poll workers are declining to work the election this year due to COVID risk. If we don’t replace these workers, polling places will either be closed in advance due to shortfalls or not open on Election Day itself or face long lines to being short staffed.
- Mail Delays – While USPS is typically great and takes election mail seriously, even in states with long histories of VBM, local organizers usually start telling voters to switch to alternatives to mail to return their ballots just to be safe – walk to a dropbox, take to a polling location, etc.
Fortunately, there are things we can do as individuals and as organizations
Individuals
- Request a mail ballot using http://www.vote-absentee.com/ – one step on this tool is confirming your voter registration is up-to-date
- If you’re at low risk of COVID-19 due to age and health factors, I recommend signing up to work the elections using PowerThePolls.org
- Ensuring your family, friends, and colleagues also know about Vote-Absentee.com and PowerThePolls.org by emailing, texting, sharing on social media, etc.
- Make your plan to return your ballot via drop box, at an early vote location, or at your elections office.
Organizations
- Vote-Absentee.com – BallotReady provides the tech powering http://www.vote-absentee.com/ – via The Movement Co-operative, America Votes, or State Voices, I think most progressive organizations should be able to leverage this tech to have an instance of this tool that lives on your own site. Getting the tool live and starting promotion ASAP for folks to sign up for mail ballots should be top priority
- PowerThePolls.org Partnerships – Your org can help sign up election workers and get analytics and data back. Partnership details here
- Save the dates of key activations:
- Sept 1 – National Poll Worker Recruitment Day – Organized by the US Election Assistance Commission, Power the Polls, and others, this event will attempt to recruit as many people as possible to ensure that all million poll worker positions in the US are filled this year.
- Sept 22 – National Voter Registration Day – A great excuse to remind everyone to update their voter registration information. Any organization can sign up to be a partner here. Historically, over 4,000 community orgs, companies, election administrators celebrate.
- Oct 9 – Kentucky’s Online Mail Ballot Request Portal Closes – This is the first of the official deadlines to request a mail ballot. That also makes it a helpful time to have mail ballot request pushes wrap and pivot to promotion of in-person early voting options. Kentucky has set this date to ensure that election officials
- Oct 24 – Vote Early Day – A new event planned for the first time for 2020. While plans started before COVID, this event is more critical than we could have known. To be ready, folks should be encouraged to request mail ballots well in advance, but October 24th is after all presidential debates and should be a good time to chase all voters to return ballots or go to an in-person early vote location.
Here’s the good news – over 53 million Americans are already signed up to receive mail ballots, either due to state policy of mailing ballots to all voters or due to opting in. States like Michigan and Pennsylvania have created online portals to request mail ballots.
I’ve been voting by mail for years in California. This year I’ll be filling in my ballot and dropping it off at a vote center the day after I receive it. Everyone should think through what they’re going to do to ensure their ballot arrives in time and gets counted. It’s ridiculous that we have to worry about this but we do.