I hope the election in November is a landslide. In saying that, I’m not saying who I want to win (you can find that elsewhere). I’m just saying I just hope it’s not close because I’m not sure we, as a nation, can handle another close election.
I am especially worried because the pandemic means voting is going to be very different this year. There’s going to be a lot more vote-by-mail. In person voting will probably be different, too (who knows how many polling places we’ll have open). I’m afraid there will be a lot of confusion, among voters and among election workers. Plus who knows if the election authorities are ready for an election as different as this one will be.
What I am worried about are mistakes and inexperience and people who don’t have their act together. For example, there is going to be a lot more absentee voting this year. Are the election authorities geared up for that? Do they have enough workers to handle it? Are deadlines set up so we can get a result as reasonably close to election day as possible? (I realize we want to have ample time frames so people can vote, but if we give people enough notice, they ought to be able to get their ballots in on time.)
Vote-by-mail, where official ballots are sent out to everybody, is particularly fraught with potential problems. Most people say there haven’t been problems in the places that have done vote-by-mail before, but were any of those elections as polarized as this one? In the last couple of months there have been issues with mail voting in Paterson, New Jersey, and New York City. In any case, the fact there haven’t been problems before, doesn’t mean we don’t need to be really careful this time. I don’t remember how many problems were there with hanging chads before Florida in 2000, but there certainly were problems that November. And If an election as boring and uninteresting as 2000 can turn into the partisan disaster it became, can you imagine what a Florida-like situation would mean in 2020?
Then there’s the Postal Service. I understand they are having lots of financial problems and with the pandemic things are really hard. Even though many of these problems are not their fault (and certainly aren’t the fault of all the really good letter carriers out there), how do we feel about trusting a really close election to the Post Office? The Post Office isn’t going to cheat, but they are going to make mistakes. Too many mistakes could wind up looking like cheating to people whose candidate loses in a close election.
Which is my worry: A lack of preparation, a lack of competence and experience, and honest mistakes will look like fraud to the losing side if the election is close. To minimize the chances of that happening, we need to review our election procedures now so we can identify possible problem spots, see where things could go wrong, and make necessary changes before it’s too late. We need to make sure we have enough workers and supplies to handle whatever might happen. We need to make sure the system is simple and understandable to election officials, election workers, and voters. Maybe states should even run practices to make sure things will work right on election day and to see if anything needs to be changed while there is still time.
There is a lot that needs to be done before November. But, in addition to everything else, we should all hope for a landslide.
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1 Obviously, both sides will think it is the other side that would do this.
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