The Case for Wearing a Mask and Voting Early in Person

By Steven Hill, In These Times

11 October 20

In battleground states, vote by mail could contribute to Trump’s “red mirage” lead on election night.

oe Biden and the Democ­rats are walk­ing into a trap in the key bat­tle­ground states that will decide the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial race, as well as key Sen­ate elec­tions. That trap is called “vote by mail” or “absen­tee voting.”

In nor­mal times, I am a pro­po­nent of hav­ing a vote by mail option. But these are not nor­mal times. For the Novem­ber 3 elec­tion, it makes much more sense to pro­mote “ear­ly vot­ing” in bat­tle­ground states rather than vote by mail. If they want to be sure that their votes will count, able-bod­ied vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive races should not mail in their bal­lots. Instead, they need to show up in per­son to vote, either before or on Elec­tion Day. Despite the dan­gers of the pan­dem­ic, vot­ers who do not have a com­pro­mised immune sys­tem need to do the hero­ic act of stand­ing in line with their masks on, just like we stand in line at the gro­cery store.

The fact is, even if there was no whiff of elec­toral fraud in the air, vote by mail has led to the loss of mil­lions of bal­lots due to errors on the part of the vot­ers, elec­tion admin­is­tra­tors and the postal ser­vice. Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, espe­cial­ly minor­i­ty vot­ers and young peo­ple, are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly hurt. The data is over­whelm­ing­ly clear on this, yet Democ­rats are ignor­ing it at their peril.

In the recent New York pri­ma­ry elec­tions, tens of thou­sands of mailed bal­lots were nev­er count­ed due to bureau­crat­ic mis­takes. Some bal­lots were post­marked after the elec­tion or nev­er post­marked at all by the postal ser­vice, mak­ing them invalid under state law. Oth­ers were dis­qual­i­fied because vot­ers did­n’t sign on an easy-to-miss sig­na­ture line on the back of the bal­lot enve­lope. Anoth­er 32,000 absen­tee bal­lots were mailed to vot­ers so late that they could­n’t return them in time to be count­ed. Just in New York City’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, over 400,000 mail-in bal­lots were received, but elec­tion offi­cials inval­i­dat­ed more than 84,000 — over a fifth of those ballots.

Across the coun­try, in 24 pri­ma­ry elec­tions this year, more than 500,000 mail-in bal­lots were reject­ed. In Penn­syl­va­nia alone, mail bal­lot prob­lems pre­vent­ed 92,000 peo­ple from cast­ing a valid vote (Don­ald Trump won Penn­syl­va­nia in 2016 by just 44,000 votes). An MIT study of the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion uncov­ered that near­ly 4 mil­lion vot­ers said they request­ed mail bal­lots but nev­er received them. Anoth­er 2.9 mil­lion bal­lots that were sent out did not make it back to elec­tion offi­cials, and about 800,000 were reject­ed due to vot­er, elec­tion offi­cial or postal ser­vice errors.

Vot­ers in many polling sta­tions ben­e­fit from tech­nol­o­gy like “error noti­fi­ca­tion,” which alerts the vot­er if she has made a dis­qual­i­fy­ing mis­take on her bal­lot. But you don’t have that with absen­tee vot­ing. “The pipeline that moves mail bal­lots between vot­ers and elec­tion offi­cials is very leaky,” the study concluded.

With vot­ing by mail surg­ing for this elec­tion, the num­ber of reject­ed mail-in bal­lots has been esti­mat­ed to eas­i­ly sur­pass a mil­lion. And those will over­whelm­ing­ly be vot­ers for Joe Biden and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate can­di­dates. Far more Biden vot­ers are plan­ning to vote by mail than Trump vot­ers. One recent study found that near­ly half of Democ­rats said they intend to vote by mail, com­pared to just 28% of Repub­li­can and inde­pen­dent vot­ers. Just as impor­tant, the neg­a­tive impacts will hit minor­i­ty vot­ers and young peo­ple hard­est. A study of Geor­gia’s 2018 midterm elec­tions found that mail-in bal­lots of “younger, minor­i­ty and first-time vot­ers are most like­ly to be thrown out.” A study of Flori­da’s 2018 elec­tion deter­mined that mail-in bal­lots “cast by Black, His­pan­ic, and oth­er racial and eth­nic minori­ties were more than twice as like­ly to be reject­ed as … bal­lots cast by White absen­tee mail voters.”

That means hun­dreds of thou­sands of more Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes will be thrown out than Repub­li­can votes. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of wide­spread dis­en­fran­chise­ment from mail-in bal­lots is real, yet the Democ­rats have been ignor­ing this and pro­mot­ing vote by mail. That is a big mistake.

To be clear, most elec­tions are won by large mar­gins, such as those in heav­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic or Repub­li­can states or dis­tricts, so these vot­ing fail­ures will not over­turn those elec­tion results. But in the bat­tle­ground states, such as Penn­syl­va­nia, Wis­con­sin, Michi­gan, North Car­oli­na or Flori­da, this could well be the decid­ing fac­tor in a close pres­i­den­tial or Sen­ate elec­tion. Add the poten­tial for par­ti­san inter­fer­ence by the U.S. Postal Ser­vice, since Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s recent­ly appoint­ed post­mas­ter gen­er­al is a big GOP cam­paign donor, or even par­ti­san Sec­re­taries of State over­see­ing the elec­tions, and you arrive at the dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty of mil­lions of mailed-in bal­lots poten­tial­ly nev­er being count­ed, and hun­dreds of thou­sands of Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers being disenfranchised.

Where is the Biden cam­paign and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship on this? The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee has been push­ing vote by mail to the point that some activists have become ner­vous. “I do wor­ry about some of the vote-by-mail push,” said Steve Schale, a Flori­da-based Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist who works with Unite the Coun­try, a pro-Biden super PAC. “We should help peo­ple vote in the way they’re most com­fort­able vot­ing. We shouldn’t force them into vote-by-mail.”

Red mirage

But it actu­al­ly gets worse. Even if you mail in your bal­lot well before elec­tion day, and it arrives in time, in a num­ber of states you still have a prob­lem: In most states, elec­tion offi­cials do not start count­ing those bal­lots right away. Of great­est con­cern, the swing states of Michi­gan, Penn­syl­va­nia, Wis­con­sin and New Hamp­shire do not even allow mail-in or absen­tee bal­lots to be processed or vot­ers’ sig­na­tures ver­i­fied before elec­tion day.

So imag­ine this Night­mare Sce­nario: With so many more Biden sup­port­ers vot­ing by mail, that means in a close elec­tion it is pos­si­ble Pres­i­dent Trump will be ahead on elec­tion night, based on par­tial returns in a num­ber of bat­tle­ground states (a sce­nario that has been called “a red mirage”). Pres­i­dent Trump already has furi­ous­ly deployed his Twit­ter soap­box to dis­cred­it mailed in bal­lots as fraud­u­lent (even though he him­self has often vot­ed absen­tee). He also has hint­ed that he may not accept the elec­tion results. Dur­ing Flori­da’s guber­na­to­r­i­al and sen­ate elec­tions in 2018, as absen­tee bal­lots were count­ed and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates nar­rowed the vote gap to a sliv­er, Trump tweet­ed that “large num­bers of new bal­lots showed up out of nowhere, and many bal­lots are miss­ing or forged.”

So what hap­pens if Trump declares vic­to­ry on elec­tion night, and then tries to dis­pute any “late” uncount­ed bal­lots, both in the courts and in the free-for-all of pub­lic opinion?

Sud­den­ly the nation will be gripped in a replay of Bush v. Gore in the 2000 elec­tion — but in sev­er­al bat­tle­ground states. Recall the par­ti­san clash­es and low-inten­si­ty intim­i­da­tion that occurred in 2000 on the pick­et lines out­side the hand counts in Flori­da. Dur­ing the course of a five-week legal war over hang­ing chads and the rules for bal­lot count­ing, pro­test­ers in com­bat fatigues held aloft signs say­ing things like “Bush or Rev­o­lu­tion,” with “rev­o­lu­tion” in bloody scrawl. Threat­en­ing let­ters were mailed to judges, includ­ing one with an illus­tra­tion of a skull and cross­bones. When George W. Bush was final­ly declared pres­i­dent, thou­sands of Florid­i­ans’ bal­lots still sat in piles across the state, not prop­er­ly count­ed, because the U.S. Supreme Court abort­ed the process.

Now imag­ine the unleash­ing of those tox­ic pas­sions in mul­ti­ple states. Dur­ing the run-up to this 2020 elec­tion, already an alarm­ing num­ber of pro­test­ers have been killed in the ten­sions swirling around the protests amid police over-reac­tion. This has all the mak­ings of a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis loom­ing like a Cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­cane just off­shore. Once the elec­tion is thrown into the hands of a con­ser­v­a­tive-major­i­ty Supreme Court, as the nation saw in Bush v. Gore, “five votes beats a rea­son any day.” The recent pass­ing of Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg tilts the court even more toward pro-Trump partisanship.

Pre­vent­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al crisis

How can we pre­vent this elec­tion melt­down? One impor­tant step is that vot­ers in most bat­tle­ground states should for­get vot­ing by mail. Instead, those vot­ers should con­sid­er putting on their masks and stand­ing in line to vote, either before or on elec­tion day. That way, their vote will be tab­u­lat­ed imme­di­ate­ly by the vot­ing equip­ment. Yes, it’s riski­er for per­son­al health, but in the cur­rent cli­mate, vote by mail is riski­er for our rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy. It’s a ter­ri­ble choice to have to make in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic. But unless you have a com­pro­mised immune sys­tem, you should not mail in your bal­lot. Instead, you should refo­cus on mak­ing a plan to do the hero­ic act of show­ing up to vote.

For­tu­nate­ly, a num­ber of states allow you to vote in per­son before elec­tion day. Spread­ing out vot­ing over many days and weeks will cut down con­sid­er­ably on long lines. Oth­er states allow you to drop off your absen­tee vote with elec­tion offi­cials before elec­tion day, which is prefer­able to mail­ing it in — but the prob­lem with that strat­e­gy is that your absen­tee bal­lot may not get count­ed before the tal­ly is released on elec­tion night. It all depends on the elec­tion pro­ce­dures in each state, which vary widely.

For exam­ple, in the bat­tle­grounds of Wis­con­sin, Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan, New Hamp­shire and Iowa, the count­ing of dropped-off absen­tee bal­lots can­not begin before elec­tion day. By elec­tion night, many of those bal­lots will like­ly still lie uncount­ed. It depends on how over­whelmed the vot­ing bureau­cra­cy is, or even the whim of par­ti­san elec­tion offi­cials. In those states, Biden vot­ers need to show up in per­son wear­ing their masks and vote. Don’t even drop off your bal­lot before elec­tion day, because your bal­lot will not be count­ed until after the elec­tion, and that will con­tribute to the “red mirage.”

But in oth­er bat­tle­ground states — notably Flori­da, North Car­oli­na, Ohio, Col­orado, Neva­da and Ari­zona—elec­tion offi­cials are allowed to count ear­ly absen­tee bal­lots before elec­tion day, and then release those vote totals right after the clos­ing of the polls on Novem­ber 3. These states also open vote cen­ters many days or weeks before the polls, where any vot­er can imme­di­ate­ly vote. In these states, vot­ers with absen­tee bal­lots should drop them off ear­ly in an offi­cial drop­box or at one of the vote cen­ters, rather than mail­ing them. Even bet­ter would be to show up ear­ly with your mask on and vote at one of the vote centers.

Some Democ­rats and their allies are start­ing to fig­ure out the “mail bal­lot dead end” they have steered them­selves into. Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) recent­ly tweet­ed that she will be “vot­ing ear­ly and in per­son.” Geor­gia leader Stacey Abrams and her vot­er empow­er­ment group Fair Fight are encour­ag­ing vot­ers to “make a plan and vote as soon as pos­si­ble.” They empha­size vot­ing ear­ly either in per­son, using an offi­cial drop-off box, or by mail. Also, the deal struck by NBA play­ers with team own­ers to use their facil­i­ties as sites for ear­ly vot­ing with enough room for social dis­tanc­ing is a step in the right direction.

But these efforts could well be inef­fec­tive for those vot­ers who live in one of the swing states that will not count absen­tee bal­lots until elec­tion day. Those vot­ers run the risk of their bal­lots not being includ­ed in the elec­tion night tal­ly, which in turn will con­tribute to the “red mirage” of Trump false­ly appear­ing to lead and imme­di­ate­ly declar­ing vic­to­ry. Cue con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis, 2020.

We can best safe­guard our democ­ra­cy this Novem­ber by uti­liz­ing ear­ly vot­ing and, if nec­es­sary, show­ing up to vote with our masks, in as many bat­tle­ground states as pos­si­ble. The Unit­ed States has reached such a per­ilous state that this sim­ple act has become heroic.