Voting Issues & Solutions During a Pandemic

Even with expanded mail-in voting, there will still be Americans who need or choose to vote in-person. To protect these voters and poll workers, states must keep as many polling places open as they can, ensure that they are adequately sanitized, and provide them with enough voting machines, ballots, and PPEs.

Expanding early in-person voting could also help reduce crowd size, wait times, pressure, and health risks at polling places on election day. In order to avoid confusion and combat disinformation, states must work vigorously to educate the public about voting rule changes, including how to request and send a mail-in ballot and the location of polling places for in-person voting. These changes will not happen on their own. Elected officials must understand their importance and commit to making them happen.

Here are some interesting recommendations from the Brennan Center for Justice that the Kennedy Institute believes merit discussion for how we can ensure the safety, accessibility, and security of their elections:

• Drop boxes for absentee ballots and appropriate security. Jurisdictions should offer secure drop boxes in accessible locations for voters to drop off ballots directly. Drop boxes must be equipped with adequate security measures, such as cameras.
• Ballot tracking. Ballot tracking software should be used to provide confidence that ballots are reaching the appropriate destination in a timely manner.
• Professional interpreters. Jurisdictions will need to offer language assistance by phone in case bilingual poll workers are absent or unavailable.
• Voter wait time tools. States and counties that use vote centers for in-person voting should develop online voter wait time tools to reduce lines and crowding

You have a critical role to play in this effort. Contact your governor, state representative, and state senator to urge them to adopt these changes immediately. You can also volunteer to be a poll worker during the general election. This will ensure that polling places are adequately staffed and protect more vulnerable populations, specifically the elderly, from risk.

Check out the Kennedy Institute’s Getting to the Point on Elections in Massachusetts to learn more about the challenges and solutions around voting during a pandemic. You can also learn more about voting during a pandemic on our JustVote.org website.

Additional Resources:

• Check out the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, a clearinghouse for information and best practices developed to ensure that the 2020 election is administered safely and equitably for everyone.
• The Brennan Center for Justice has a breakdown of where state’s current stand on their policy recommendations and their report on the estimated cost of protecting to 2020 election.
• Check out the National Conference of State Legislature’s brief on how COVID-19 has challenged our elections this year and the various ways states and the federal government have responded so far to meet these challenges. You can also read the NCSL’s thorough introduction of absentee, all-mail, and other voting from home options here.
• You can sign up to be a poll worker at the Stanford-MIT Health Elections Project or at Power the Polls.