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It will be impractical, and in many places impossible, to safely conduct the election in 2020 unless the numbers voting on Election Day are greatly reduced. (Photo: Shutterstock)
To Save Lives--and Democracy--We Need to Vote by Mail
We need tens of millions of fewer Americans voting at the polls. Sending ballots in the mail is the simplest solution.
May 20, 2020
For many Americans, vote-by-mail will be a matter of life and death come November.
In a pandemic, it is immoral to force voters to choose between their health and their freedom to vote. And it is immoral to knowingly trigger a major outbreak of the coronavirus when the damage can be limited with a few procedural changes.
To be specific, we need to maximize the use of mailed-in ballots. This is the most practical way to minimize in-person voting, making it possible to implement the social distancing and sanitizing necessary to resist spreading infection.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
We also need to minimize in-person voting, because most of the elderly people who staff polling places will, sensibly, not work during the pandemic. It will be impractical, and in many places impossible, to safely conduct the election in 2020 unless the numbers voting on Election Day are greatly reduced.
More than 136 million Americans voted in 2016. Of these, about 80 million (nearly 60 percent) voted at the polls on Election Day. We need 40 to 60 million of those to vote early or mail their votes next time.
It is true that almost all of the presidential swing states allow no-excuse-required absentee voting. By law, any registered voter who asks for an absentee ballot in these states should get one in the mail.
But absentee voting doesn't really solve the problem.
Lower-income Americans and people of color are less likely to request an application to vote absentee. They tend to have little experience with absentee voting and many have no access to the Internet to apply online or download a PDF application. The applications themselves can often be prohibitively complicated, too.
Most of those problems would be solved if state or county authorities mailed an already-filled-in application to every registered voter. The Board of Elections already has the information requested on the application--all they need is a signature. And the form could include a personalized barcode to help election officials automate the process of building the absentee list.
That makes sense if it's the best you can get from your state. But it would be simpler and cheaper to simply mail a ballot to every registered voter--a vote-by-mail system.
The reality is, because of the pandemic, election boards will be flooded with absentee voting applications in 2020, far more than they've ever handled before. Sending a ballot to every voter is likely to be more practical for officials to accomplish than dealing with millions of new absentee applications one-by-one.
In fact, five states have vote-by-mail already, and fraud is nearly non-existent.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
And it will still threaten us then. That means now is the time to forcefully advocate for voting-by-mail so Americans can participate in our great democracy without risking their lives.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This column was distributed by OtherWords.
Bernie Horn
Bernie Horn is Senior Advisor for Progressive Majority Action and the Public Leadership Institute.
For many Americans, vote-by-mail will be a matter of life and death come November.
In a pandemic, it is immoral to force voters to choose between their health and their freedom to vote. And it is immoral to knowingly trigger a major outbreak of the coronavirus when the damage can be limited with a few procedural changes.
To be specific, we need to maximize the use of mailed-in ballots. This is the most practical way to minimize in-person voting, making it possible to implement the social distancing and sanitizing necessary to resist spreading infection.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
We also need to minimize in-person voting, because most of the elderly people who staff polling places will, sensibly, not work during the pandemic. It will be impractical, and in many places impossible, to safely conduct the election in 2020 unless the numbers voting on Election Day are greatly reduced.
More than 136 million Americans voted in 2016. Of these, about 80 million (nearly 60 percent) voted at the polls on Election Day. We need 40 to 60 million of those to vote early or mail their votes next time.
It is true that almost all of the presidential swing states allow no-excuse-required absentee voting. By law, any registered voter who asks for an absentee ballot in these states should get one in the mail.
But absentee voting doesn't really solve the problem.
Lower-income Americans and people of color are less likely to request an application to vote absentee. They tend to have little experience with absentee voting and many have no access to the Internet to apply online or download a PDF application. The applications themselves can often be prohibitively complicated, too.
Most of those problems would be solved if state or county authorities mailed an already-filled-in application to every registered voter. The Board of Elections already has the information requested on the application--all they need is a signature. And the form could include a personalized barcode to help election officials automate the process of building the absentee list.
That makes sense if it's the best you can get from your state. But it would be simpler and cheaper to simply mail a ballot to every registered voter--a vote-by-mail system.
The reality is, because of the pandemic, election boards will be flooded with absentee voting applications in 2020, far more than they've ever handled before. Sending a ballot to every voter is likely to be more practical for officials to accomplish than dealing with millions of new absentee applications one-by-one.
In fact, five states have vote-by-mail already, and fraud is nearly non-existent.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
And it will still threaten us then. That means now is the time to forcefully advocate for voting-by-mail so Americans can participate in our great democracy without risking their lives.
Bernie Horn
Bernie Horn is Senior Advisor for Progressive Majority Action and the Public Leadership Institute.
For many Americans, vote-by-mail will be a matter of life and death come November.
In a pandemic, it is immoral to force voters to choose between their health and their freedom to vote. And it is immoral to knowingly trigger a major outbreak of the coronavirus when the damage can be limited with a few procedural changes.
To be specific, we need to maximize the use of mailed-in ballots. This is the most practical way to minimize in-person voting, making it possible to implement the social distancing and sanitizing necessary to resist spreading infection.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
We also need to minimize in-person voting, because most of the elderly people who staff polling places will, sensibly, not work during the pandemic. It will be impractical, and in many places impossible, to safely conduct the election in 2020 unless the numbers voting on Election Day are greatly reduced.
More than 136 million Americans voted in 2016. Of these, about 80 million (nearly 60 percent) voted at the polls on Election Day. We need 40 to 60 million of those to vote early or mail their votes next time.
It is true that almost all of the presidential swing states allow no-excuse-required absentee voting. By law, any registered voter who asks for an absentee ballot in these states should get one in the mail.
But absentee voting doesn't really solve the problem.
Lower-income Americans and people of color are less likely to request an application to vote absentee. They tend to have little experience with absentee voting and many have no access to the Internet to apply online or download a PDF application. The applications themselves can often be prohibitively complicated, too.
Most of those problems would be solved if state or county authorities mailed an already-filled-in application to every registered voter. The Board of Elections already has the information requested on the application--all they need is a signature. And the form could include a personalized barcode to help election officials automate the process of building the absentee list.
That makes sense if it's the best you can get from your state. But it would be simpler and cheaper to simply mail a ballot to every registered voter--a vote-by-mail system.
The reality is, because of the pandemic, election boards will be flooded with absentee voting applications in 2020, far more than they've ever handled before. Sending a ballot to every voter is likely to be more practical for officials to accomplish than dealing with millions of new absentee applications one-by-one.
In fact, five states have vote-by-mail already, and fraud is nearly non-existent.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, want the government to require mail-in ballots for the November election if the coronavirus still threatens the public this autumn.
And it will still threaten us then. That means now is the time to forcefully advocate for voting-by-mail so Americans can participate in our great democracy without risking their lives.
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