In year of voting by mail, in-person voting gets push, too
Unnerved PHILADELPHIA— by the difficulties of voting amid a pandemic and faced with both the political static injected by President Donald Trump and the limits on expanding voting by mail, state and local authorities across the country are racing to rethink and reinforce the polling sites where tens of millions of people are still expected tocast their ballots.
For all of the attention on voting by mail, perhaps 4 in 10 votes — 60 million ballots — are likely to be cast in person this fall, either early or on Election Day. Overall turnout couldwell reach 150 million for the first time, up from 137.5 million in 2016, accordingtoBarryC. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the UniversityofWisconsin-Madison.
Against the backdrop of Trump’s criticism of voting by mail, the breakdowns at thePostal Serviceandthe relatively high rate of rejections of mailed-in ballots, election officials and activists in both parties are amping upefforts to hire and train poll workers; integrate stadiums, arenas and malls into their voting options; and come up with plans if there’s a surge in coronavirus cases in the fall.
Amajor area of concern is finding younger peoplewho are able to replace olderones most susceptible to the ravages of COVID-19 at a time when 58% of the nation’s pollworkers are 61 or older.
“Everyone’s focusing on the rate of voting by mail, whichisgoingtoeasilydouble what it was in 2016 — somewhere north of 80 million ballots,” said Paul Gronke,
an expert on in-person voting at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. “But people aren’t paying attention to what might happen if there’s a spike in the pandemic or a shortage of pollworkers and there’s a last-minute reduction in in-person voting.”
“In some of our minds, the nightmare scenario isn’t about voting by mail,” he said. “It’s a meltdown at the polling places.”
It’s not clearwhethermany voters are rethinking plans to vote by mail, although early research on the issue confirms that a disproportionate number of Democrats plans to vote by mail, and many Republicans are following Trump’s cue and refusing that option. There is a clear needtoensure that in-person votingworks, particularly in many cities with large Black and brown populations.
In Cuyahoga County in Ohio, which includes Clevelandandis roughly29% Black
and 66% white, white neighborhoods had a 30% absentee ballot request rate in the 2020primary, whereas Black neighborhoods had only a 15% request rate, and Hispanic neighborhoods had a 17% request rate, according to a recent study by Demos, a liberal think tank.
Shoring up in-person voting has focused on both poll workers and polling places.
The stuffy church basements and senior-living centers that were once reliable voting sites are now unusable. The tolerance for long lines has shrunk drastically. Where administrators used to fret about the occasional equipment breakdowns and ballot shortages, they must worry now about backup plans if a coronavirus outbreak shutters a polling site or sidelines the pollworkers who have staffed it.
Gronke recalled a tabletop exercise this summer about possible election disaster
scenarios. One official from a tiny jurisdiction asked for advice should one of the four electionworkers in its single office contract the coronavirus a week before the election, forcing the remaining three into quarantine.
“That just stoppedthe conversation,” he said.
Somelocalesaremakingdo with relatively minor adjustments. InHennepin County, Minnesota, home to Minneapolis and 800,000 registered voters, officials have closed a fewcramped voting sites and consolidated them withprecinctswherethepolling place is more spacious. Recruitment of poll workers has gonewell, and a trial run of the newplans during a local primary last month was judged a success, said Ginny Gelms, theHennepin County elections manager.
“This election will be difficult,” she said, “but we’re feeling pretty good right now.”
MaricopaCounty, Arizona, one of the nation’s largest voting jurisdictions, which includes Phoenix, has effectively redrawn its system to address health concerns.
Areviewafter the primary election inMarch concluded that many of the 500 polling places were too small to safely accommodate voters, Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for the county Elections Department, said in an interview. So for the November election, polling hasbeen moved toasmanyas 175voting centers, in places like shopping malls and convention facilities.
Eighty of the sites will be open for a 27-day early voting period that will feature expandedeveningandweekend hours. Both then and on Nov. 3, voters will be able to cast a ballot atanyof the sites.
The consolidation carries anextrabenefit: Itallowedthe county to slash its 3,600-person corps of pollworkers in half — to 1,800 — even while expanding the number of check-in stations at each polling place.
Maricopa was able to use federal grant money from the coronavirus stimulus program for its transformation. But major election changes cost money that most jurisdictions don’t have.
A central goal nationwide is to prevent the drastic consolidation of polling locationsthatplaguedsomeofthe biggest cities in the country during the primaries and led tohourslonglines. Milwaukee had just five polling locations from180 in April, and Philadelphia consolidated to just 200 sites from 830 in June. While some locations were moved because they were near sites with populations vulnerabletothecoronavirus, such as a nursing home, the largest factor in consolidating polling stations has been a shortage of poll workers.
Givenhealth fears for older people, government officials and nonprofits, including More Than aVote, the collective of athletes headlined by LeBron James, have started campaignstorecruit younger citizens to be poll workers.
Philadelphia is mounting a sprint to find roughly 3,000 more poll workers between now and Election Day — on top of the more than 4,000 alreadyhired. Tosweetenthe pot, the city announced last week that itwould be raising the pay to as much as $250 for Election Day.
Businesses are playing an increasing role. Clothing chain Old Navy said this week that itwould give a paid day off to any of its 50,000 employees who work at the polls. Hundreds of companies, fromthe Coca-Cola Co. to Mailchimp to Patagonia, have made Election Day a paid holidayor givenemployees time off to vote or to perform election work, and 23 states require companies to grant time off to vote.
Professional sports teams inDetroit, Houston, LosAngeles, Pittsburghandelsewhere have offered up their arenas for voting and other election purposes; their size making for a much safer location amid coronavirus than a middle school basement.
At the Philadelphia event, tables were set up to recruit poll workers. One woman, Trana Loglisci, 49, approached before it started and signed up. She said she recalled how difficult it was in June to vote in the primary and wanted to get involved.
“I like to try to make a difference somehow,” she said.