Gov. Gavin Newsom bungles all-mail balloting in a pandemic

Gov. Gavin Newsom took the right first step last week by ordering that all California registered voters receive ballots at home that they can return by mail for the November election.

It’s a no-brainer that will help minimize the risk of spreading the coronavirus in the upcoming presidential election.

And then he started pandering, leaving the door open for California’s Democratic legislators to manipulate the state’s election procedures just as Republican lawmakers attempted to do in Wisconsin last month.

California — and every other state in the nation — should be moving to all-mail voting to avoid a debacle like that the nation witnessed in Wisconsin, where voters stood in long lines in the middle of a pandemic to cast a ballot.

It’s likely that, although we’ve slowed the increase of COVID-19 cases in California, the novel coronavirus will be circulating in the population this fall. Voters should be strongly encouraged to mark their ballots from home and deposit them in a mailbox or at a local drop-off location.

Sadly, that wasn’t Newsom’s message.

“Nothing in this Order shall be construed to limit the extent to which in-person voting opportunities are made available in connection with the November 3, 2020 General Election,” reads the governor’s executive directive.

Instead, Newsom plans to work with Secretary of State Alex Padilla and the Legislature on requirements for the number of polling locations. Proposals currently being floated call for as many as one polling location for every 10,000 registered voters.

That works out to more than 400 vote centers in the Bay Area and more than 2,000 statewide. That’s ridiculous — especially when every registered voter is going to be mailed a ballot.

The goal should be to minimize the amount of in-person interaction and contact. Instead, Padilla said he’s committed “to providing as many safe, in-person opportunities to vote as possible.”

That’s the wrong message. Yes, the state needs to ensure that those with disabilities or who are homeless have an opportunity to vote, if necessary, at a polling location. But those people should be the exceptions.

As for everyone else, in normal times, it might be fine to accommodate those who just like that experience of casting their ballots at the polls. But this is no time for nostalgia. Voters who receive their ballots in the mail should be expected, and strongly encouraged, to return it the same way.

The goal should be not only to maximize voter turnout, but to also minimize risk to voters and poll workers. Some vote centers will be needed in each county, but they should be strategically located and kept to a minimum, probably no more than about five for each county. Their hours of operation should be spread out over several days leading up to Election Day to limit the risk of overcrowding.

There should also be reasonable consideration given to county election officials, who must find the locations and people to staff those vote centers.

The senior citizens who provide much of the labor on Election

Day are the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus and, this year, will be far more reluctant to risk their lives by volunteering. Operators of schools, community centers and churches, which frequently house neighborhood polls, will be less willing to let strangers come through.

Putting on an election under normal circumstances is challenging. This November will be exceptional. Unfortunately, partisan politics seems to be driving Newsom, Padilla and the Democratic-controlled Legislature, who want to maximize every opportunity to capture a vote.

To be clear, congressional Republicans and President Trump’s push to depress turnout and block vote-by-mail efforts is despicable. But California shouldn’t swing wildly the other way and end up, paradoxically, creating some of the same health hazards as Wisconsin’s Republicans.

Because of a lack of testing, we’ll probably never know the full effect of the Wisconsin primary on voters’ health.

“It’s safe to say (the election) didn’t help,” Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention at UW Health, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical arm, told The New York Times. “But whether it actively hurt people, it’s very likely but not possible to really prove it.”

California should heed all the lessons from Wisconsin. That means that, in a pandemic, state lawmakers need to set boundaries.