Toward a pandemicproof election

President Trump took some time away from the lifeanddeath crisis preoccupying most of his country over the weekend to weigh in on the minutiae of a close California congressional election. While Trump and his allies have spent much of the past several weeks trying to thwart the expansion of voting by mail in November, in this case he was objecting to the accommodation of more inperson voting in Southern California on Tuesday for a special election being conducted mostly by mail. Why? Because he fears the location of a particular polling place will help more African American and Latino voters cast ballots.

It was the latest frank confession of a politics that relies not on persuading people to vote a certain way but on preventing them from voting at all. Having gone from insisting on traditional polling places to criticizing them in the space of a few weeks, Trump demonstrated that his only consistent objection is to broad participation.

Absentee voting has long been thought to lean conservative, but in the midst of a deadly contagion spread by interpersonal contact, blocking remote balloting becomes an all too handy and ruthless means of voter suppression. Take Wisconsin, which pressed ahead with a traditional election last month, causing so many election worker noshows that the number of polling places in Milwaukee had to be reduced from 180 to five.

California should be able to avoid such a spectacle thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order Friday requiring counties to send every registered voter a mailin ballot for the November election. The directive takes advantage of a timetested means of voting from a safe distance while allowing inperson voting for those who prefer it. True to form, a Trump campaign spokesman attacked the expansion of mail voting as a “thinly veiled political tactic” — the day before his candidate criticized inperson voting in Tuesday’s special election on the same grounds.

While five other states have gone so far as to adopt allmail elections as standard procedure, California is in a better position than most to enable more voting via Postal Service. Fourteen counties, including San Mateo, Santa Clara and Napa, already mail ballots to all voters while allowing traditional electionday voting at a reduced number of locations. In the March primary, 72% of votes were cast by mail.

Even in lessvoterfriendly states, absentee ballots have been in long use and provide a ready means of pandemicproof voting. In the interests of public health and democratic participation, more states should strive to follow California’s lead and mail every registered voter a ballot. At the very least, every state that persists in maintaining barriers to absentee voting should eliminate them to allow more Americans to exercise their rights without risking their lives. Twothirds of the states, including California, already provide mailin ballots to any registered voter who requests one, no questions asked.

Voting by mail works for most people but not, as Newsom noted, everyone. State and local officials therefore have work to do to ensure that those who choose to vote in person can do so as easily and safely as possible.

Questions of electoral procedure are political by definition, tempting all sides to jockey for advantage in normal times. But given the potential of voting by mail to protect our lives and democracy in these extraordinary circumstances, it should have the support of all but the most cynical partisans.