Voting in the 2020 election is underway, and already, election controversy is afoot. The Georgia secretary of state announced this week that 1,000 voters allegedly double voted during the state’s primary election. Lawsuits are underway across the country, pursued by both parties, either pushing to scale back the scope of distribution of mail-in ballots or to expand the grounds under which such ballots can be requested or accepted.
Though voting in the United States in recent years has gotten increasingly easy for most voters, with the expansion of vote-by-mail and early voting programs, and though the vast majority of voters in the 2018 midterms said that they found it “very easy” to cast their ballot, voters’ confidence in elections has dropped precipitously since the last presidential election. Today, fewer than half of those polled say they are confident that the results of the election will be counted accurately.
This lack of public confidence, mixed with prolonged or delayed vote counting, seems like a recipe for disaster. Will we know on Election Day who the next president will be? And what can the average citizen do to help do his or her small part to ensure our elections work fairly and accurately under trying circumstances?
The first question will hinge on how close the election is and in which states it is close. Because of the Electoral College, some states will be critical to determining the overall presidential election outcome, while others will be foregone conclusions for one party or the other.
For instance, California is notoriously slow at counting ballots, but it is also not exactly a tipping-point state. Meanwhile, my beloved home state of Florida (extremely likely to be decisive and an early election night bellwether) has done serious work boosting its election systems in the decades since the infamous 2000 recount and is consistently a state that counts quickly, even given widespread use of absentee balloting.
But the emergence of a pandemic and the scrambling on the part of some states to throw together widespread mail-in voting programs hastily means we are doomed to have states with big problems. While states such as Colorado and Washington have spent years building and refining their mail-in voting systems to ensure they are secure and workable, some states such as New Jersey are spinning up brand new mail-in voting systems with less than three months until Election Day.
Common sense goes a long way toward making mail-in voting work, and there are plenty of places where it is lacking in certain states. For instance, some states have laughable deadlines that all but ensure thousands of ballots will be thrown out unless election officials can bend the space-time continuum. Florida, for instance, requires a request for a mail-in ballot be received 10 days before the election, a timeline far more connected to reality than Minnesota, which allows a ballot to be requested the day before Election Day.
We will have complete results in some states and a possible mess in others. Whether that prevents analysts from being able to call the presidential race will hinge on which states fall into which category and how close the election turns out to be.
All of which comes to the second question: What can the average citizen do to make the best of this situation?
First, if you intend to vote by mail, do so with plenty of time to ensure your ballot arrives in advance of Election Day. Be sure to follow every last instruction to the letter; while some states will contact you to let you know if something is wrong with your ballot, there’s no guarantee. Fill it out, set it aside, and then come back to it an hour or two later to see if there’s anything you missed or misread.
But second, if you are not in a vulnerable population and have the flexibility to do so, consider volunteering at the polls on Election Day. While mail-in voting may present problems in states with new or poorly crafted systems, in-person voting everywhere could also be subject to unusually long lines and other issues if polling places are insufficiently staffed. Usually, these volunteers are older retirees who graciously volunteer their time to keep the wheels of democracy rolling, but given the disproportionate health effects of COVID-19 on elderly people, the pool of volunteers who can safely work the polls has been reduced.
At the moment, the most visible efforts to encourage people to volunteer as poll workers are being pushed by celebrities who are prominent Democrats, but Republicans should not be turned off by the messenger on this issue. Republicans are significantly more likely to report wanting to vote in person this year, underscoring why having safe, efficient in-person voting should be a truly nonpartisan cause. And in some states, poll workers are paired up by party, meaning a similar number of Republicans and Democrats are needed to make the system work.
No matter your party, if you’re able to get out of work and volunteer on Election Day, consider doing so.
