3 states vote, but coronavirus disruptions could last months

The coronavirus forced officials to scrap Democratic presidential primary voting altogether in Ohio and hampered some balloting in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday as a global pandemic that has shut down large swaths of American life threatened to disrupt elections around the country for months to come.

Ohio called off its state’s primary just hours before polls were set to open as the federal government urged Americans not to gather in groups of 10 or more and asked older people to stay home entirely.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez blasted Ohio’s unprecedented move for breeding “more chaos and confusion.“He sought to head off more states from taking similar actions, urging those with upcoming primaries to expand vote-by-mail and absentee balloting, as well as polling station hours, so that efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus don’t further derail his party’s contest for the right to face President Donald Trump in November.

“The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, and we must do everything we can to protect and expand that right instead of bringing our democratic process to a halt,” Perez said in a statement. Four other states — Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky and Maryland — have already moved to push back their primaries, and others could follow suit.

For those pushing ahead with voting, meanwhile, problems popped up across the country. In Illinois, an elections official and the governor traded blame over who was responsible for chaos at the polls. In Okaloosa

County in Florida’s Panhandle, two dozen poll workers dropped out, leaving Elections Supervisor Paul Lux’s staff scrambling to train replacements.

“We are at the honest end of the rope,“Lux said.

The coronavirus has cast a shadow over the Democratic primary race as debates over policy minutiae have taken a back seat to issues of life and death.

“It’s definitely eerie,” said Jesse Lehrich, a Democratic operative and former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman who is based in Chicago, who added, “Biden and Sanders are debating the merits of marginally different policies in this little pseudo-reality, while America is consumed by an unprecedented crisis.“

Still unclear Tuesday was the extent to which the coronavirus would affect turnout. Joe Biden is moving closer to securing the Democratic presidential nomination but could face a setback if the older voters who tend to support him don’t show up. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, can’t afford to lose support from young voters who have been his most loyal supporters.

“People are prioritizing their day-to-day survival right now — so they’re not thinking of voting as a priority,“said Debra Cleaver, the founder of Vote.org.

Millions of voters have already participated in some form of early voting. But there were signs on Tuesday that voters — and poll workers — were staying home.

Scott P. Yates / Associated Press Election judge Marsha Redmond uses gloves and wipes to sanitize each booth after a person voted at St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday.