Primaries are test for parties amid COVID-19
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Tuesday’s primaries in eight states are the biggest test to date of campaigning during the coronavirus era, a way for parties to testdrive new ways of getting out the vote during a time when it can be dangerous to leave your home.
Voters from Pennsylvania to Iowa to New Mexico will cast ballots in both the Democratic presidential contest, where former Vice President Joe Biden is the only contender with an active campaign, and a host of down-ballot primaries for everything from governors to state representatives. Many states postponed elections scheduled between mid-March and May to the date because of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Unable to send candidates out to barnstorm the states or volunteers to knock on voters’ doors, campaigns have had to improvise. One Pennsylvania Republican congressional campaign recruited 100 people, including its candidate’s large extended family, to hand-write thousands of letters to voters urging support. Another organized “pop-up food banks” for the needy. Others moved up television advertising to capitalize on a captive audience locked down at home. Democrats have created a phone banking model almost along the lines of a technology support hub, where knowledgeable volunteers and staffers can guide confused voters, step by step, through the process of voting by mail.
“Any plan you had three months ago is out the window,” said Brock Lowrance, a Republican strategist working on two Montana races — Sen. Steve Daines’ reelection bid and Rep. Greg Gianforte’s bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. “Campaigns are having to adapt in the ways they’re talking to voters but also in the ways voters are going to vote.”
Some voting experts predict half or more of all ballots cast in the November election will be sent through the mail, as the Centers for Disease Control recommends as a way to lessen risk of exposure to the virus at polling stations. States have scrambled to adjust to the new reality with some sending every voter an absentee ballot request.
The greatest attention is on Pennsylvania, however. It’s simultaneously the biggest state voting on Tuesday, the only one that likely is to be a presidential battleground in November and the state that’s seen the biggest shift in voting in the COVID-19 era.
That’s because this is the first statewide election under a new, more permissive mail voting law passed last year. In 2016, only 4.6 percent of the state’s voters cast a ballot by mail. Now 21 percent of all the state’s 8.5 million voters have already requested absentee ballots.
Democrats are overwhelmingly the ones asking to vote by mail — 1.3 million have filed requests, compared with 525,000 Republicans, state records show. That’s partly a reflection of GOP distrust of mail voting that’s been stoked by President Donald Trump, who’s claimed without evidence it will lead to widespread fraud. Even the Trump campaign, recognizing that getting supporters to mail ballots in is key to winning elections, has been pushing Republicans to use the technique.
Some Pennsylvania Republicans have worried Trump is hobbling the party by making its voters distrust the easiest method of voting during the pandemic. Others argue the gap will close in the fall, when Democrats aren’t the only ones to have a presidential candidate on the ballot.
Also conducting primaries Tuesday are Indiana, Maryland, Rhode Island and South Dakota.