Coronavirus and the 2020-? election

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Georgia election officials are postponing the state’s March 24 presidential primaries until May because of fears over the coronavirus.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement that in-person early voting, which began statewide March 2, will be halted and the election will be moved to May 19, when Georgia’s other 2020 primary elections are being held.

“Our priority is to protect the health and safety of all Georgians and to ensure that as many Georgians as possible have an opportunity to vote,” said state Sen. Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Continued in-person voting could compromise both goals. Georgians who have already cast their vote in person or by mail for the March 24 primary will be able to vote again in the May 19 primary for the elections already scheduled for that date. If Georgians who have already cast their vote for the March 24 primary do not vote again in the May 19 primary, their votes for the presidential preference primary will still count.”

Raffensperger has represented that all votes already cast in person and all absentee ballots will be counted and every Georgia voter who has not yet had a chance to cast a ballot in the March 24 elections will be able to do so on May 19, along with the elections already scheduled for that date.”

“Given these circumstances, I believe it is necessary and prudent to suspend in-person voting in the Presidential Preference Primary, and the local elections associated with them, and resume in-person voting for those elections as part of the already scheduled May 19 General Primary.”

I can picture Trump doing this, so he can be dictator for life.

Doing what exactly though?

The whole problem is he basically did nothing, and is doing nothing in regards to this crisis.

A travel ban of europe, while excluding the U.K isn't doing something about the crisis...he's still just trying to send a message of disapproval to the EU even in a time like this. Its already in the U.K how is a travel ban from europe excluding the U.K supposed to do anything?

I just don't see any part of this being his plot to become dictator, if anything he probably really hoped the travel ban of china would prevent it spreading here, even downplayed it early and well now the pandemic is here...and kinda seems he just has no idea what to do now.

Doing what exactly though?

The whole problem is he basically did nothing, and is doing nothing in regards to this crisis.

A travel ban of europe, while excluding the U.K isn't doing something about the crisis...he's still just trying to send a message of disapproval to the EU even in a time like this. Its already in the U.K how is a travel ban from europe excluding the U.K supposed to do anything?

The UK and Ireland are included in the ban also, now.

Oh now they are? Well should have been in the first place....why the hell was he trying to exclude the U.K in the initial ban? A lot of good it will do now

Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday night announced his state's health director will order Ohio's polls to be closed Tuesday "as a health emergency" over the spread of the coronavirus, a dramatic move just hours before the state's scheduled primaries.

DeWine had recommended that the primaries be postponed, but a county judge had denied the request Monday evening.

"During this time when we face an unprecedented public health crisis, to conduct an election tomorrow would force poll workers and voters to place themselves at an unacceptable health risk of contracting coronavirus. As such, Health Director Dr. Amy Acton will order the polls closed as a health emergency. While the polls will be closed tomorrow, Secretary of State Frank LaRose will seek a remedy through the courts to extend voting options so that every voter who wants to vote will be granted that opportunity," DeWine said in a statement.

“The only thing more important than a free and fair election is the health and safety of Ohioans. The Ohio Department of Health and the CDC have advised against anyone gathering in groups larger than 50 people, which will occur if the election goes forward. Additionally, Ohioans over 65 and those with certain health conditions have been advised to limit their nonessential contact with others, affecting their ability to vote or serve as poll workers,” DeWine and LaRose said earlier, after the judge's ruling. “Logistically, under these extraordinary circumstances, it simply isn’t possible to hold an election tomorrow that will be considered legitimate by Ohioans. They mustn’t be forced to choose between their health and exercising their constitutional rights.”

President Trump -- speaking at a coronavirus briefing at the White House Monday afternoon -- said he'd leave such decisions on postponing a primary up to the states but emphasized, "I think postponing is unnecessary."

Ohio is the only one of the four states scheduled to hold presidential primaries on Tuesday to move to postpone its contest. Officials in the other states - Arizona, Florida and Illinois - said their primaries would still take place.

Kentucky Gov. Andrew Beshear and Secretary of State Michael G. Adams on Monday postponed the state's primary elections, which originally were scheduled for May 19, to June 23 amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

The state becomes the latest in a rapidly growing number to put off their primaries, throwing into question the rest of the 2020 election calendar -- even as voters in three states head to the polls Tuesday.

"I never would have imagined sitting here discussing this with you, but these are unprecedented times," Adams said in a video posted to Twitter. "And we Kentuckians are having to change the way we do things on all fronts. Kentucky law allows the secretary of state and the governor to jointly act to change the time of an election due to a state of emergency."

Only five states and Washington, D.C., originally were scheduled to hold primary elections after Kentucky's May 19 date. The move by Beshear, a Democrat, and Adams, a Republican, could be repeated by officials in states with even earlier primaries in the days ahead.

"Postponing the primary was not an easy decision, but the Republican secretary of state and Democratic governor agree, and so do county clerks of both parties, and they are our frontline election administrators," Adams said. "My hope is that this delay will allow us to have a normal election. Even if not, this delay will allow me, the state board of elections and our county clerks time to assess what changes we must make to ensure a successful primary election. There could be more changes, but this was a first step, to buy us time and keep our citizens as safe as possible. We'll get through this."

The COVID-19 pandemic has already disrupted public life in a number of ways — large events are canceled, restaurants are closed and many of us are stuck at home — but a fundamental aspect of our democratic society could also be under threat: voting.

Already, eight states or territories have postponed their presidential primaries — but depending on how long this pandemic affects day-to-day life in the United States, it could impact the November general election, too. But this isn’t the first time our country has had to go to the polls in a time of crisis. Elections have occurred during economic catastrophes like the Great Depression as well as during both world wars. The good news is we’ve always managed to hold general elections — even in the midst of the Civil War — but the bad news is that our ability to vote is often hampered. And turnout has usually fallen because voting became harder or costlier in the face of natural or man-made calamities. Looking ahead to the November election, recent primary elections show that states need to be prepared for the worst when it comes to making sure people can vote despite a health crisis.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the current health crisis we find ourselves in — how long will the urgency of the coronavirus threat last, for example, or how things will look come November — but if we’re looking at elections comparable to our current moment, the most relevant may be the 1918 midterm.

That fall, in the waning days of World War I, the Spanish flu — a strain of influenza that got that name because Spain was one of the few countries to report on it freely — ravaged the United States, killing hundreds of thousands of people, many in the lead-up to the November election.

In response to this devastating disease, public health officials tried to limit its spread, but those mitigation policies affected political campaigns. Marian Moser Jones, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health who studies the influenza pandemic, pointed to bans on public gatherings, which we’re seeing now too. “[Y]ou couldn’t have the usual election speeches, which were then even more important because you didn’t have television or radio,” Jones said. “[Candidates] had to actually campaign via newspaper editorials and mailings.”

This was particularly true out west, where the pandemic’s severity peaked in the days before the election. Even election night changed: There was a ban on the display of election returns on large boards outside of newspaper offices so that crowds wouldn’t gather to watch results come in, Jones told me. And in Los Angeles, “election officers locked themselves in each voting booth to count the votes and to prevent flu transmission.”

The Spanish flu also likely contributed to lower turnout on Election Day. About 40 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots in the 1918 midterm election, down sharply from the 50 to 52 percent that voted in the previous two midterms.

Jason Marisam, who studied the effect of influenza on the 1918 election as a legal fellow at Harvard Law School (he’s now an assistant attorney general in Minnesota), told me that it probably did have an effect on people voting. “The San Francisco Chronicle ran photos of Election Day, people lining up to vote all wearing these masks. They called it the first masked ballot in U.S. history,” said Marisam. “You have to think that that kind of mentality had an impact on turnout.”

Observers back in 1918 attributed the drop in turnout to the effects of the pandemic, too. “The Los Angeles Times estimated that the flu had kept 40,000 people away from the polls in San Francisco,” said Jones, adding that newspaper accounts of voting in Arizona and New Mexico talked about the disinfection of polling places and a “light vote” due to influenza and the absence of many men due to the war.

There’s one obvious complication when we examine turnout in 1918: the First World War. It’s difficult to separate out influenza’s effect on the election because around 2 million men were also fighting overseas in 1918, and not much was done to help them vote. That meant a sizable chunk of the electorate was effectively disenfranchised, as only men 21 years or older could vote in much of the country. (Remember, the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, wasn’t ratified until summer 1920.) Nonetheless, even if influenza only explains part of the drop-off in voter turnout, Marisam estimated it was still likely responsible for hundreds of thousands of people not voting.

But despite public health worries associated with influenza, Marisam told me he could find no evidence that people discussed postponing the 1918 election. Civic pride and patriotism were high during World War I, as war bond campaigns and propaganda from the Committee on Public Information encouraged Americans to do their part to support the war effort. And newspapers encouraged citizens to go to the polls despite the Spanish flu with headlines like “Every Loyal Californian Will Cast Vote At Election Today” in the Los Angeles Times. There also wasn’t a national debate over whether the results were legitimate, even though turnout was lower, and in some parts of the country, officials claimed influenza may have affected the results in congressional and local elections.

Of course, the 1918 election isn’t the only election to be held during a time of crisis (although it did take place during one of our country’s massive health crises). But just like the 1918 election, other federal elections also held during world wars saw depressed turnout.

In 1942, during World War II, the government tried to buoy turnout by passing the Soldiers Voting Act, which helped states send federal ballots to service members. It didn’t work particularly well: Less than 30,000 federal ballots were cast under its provisions1 and turnout in 1942 was very low — just 34 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot, making it the second-lowest midterm turnout since the ratification of the 19th Amendment (only 1926, at 33 percent, was lower).

Trying to avoid the same problems in 1944, Congress passed a military ballot law ahead of the election that helped at least 2.6 million soldiers cast ballots — enough to make a difference for President Franklin Roosevelt in at least one state. (He won enough military votes in New Jersey to overcome his deficit among civilian votes, according to a contemporaneous study.) Still, turnout in 1944 was lower than the previous two presidential elections, and as you can see in the table below, voter turnout in elections during U.S. involvement in the two world wars was lower than in previous midterm and presidential elections.

But it’s not just war and disease that have disrupted our elections. Sudden natural disasters have also impeded voting, as demonstrated by Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast just days ahead of the 2012 election. New Jersey and New York were especially hard-hit, and leaders there had to work to ease voting access in the storm’s aftermath. In New Jersey, the government designated those displaced by the storm as “overseas voters,” which allowed them to email or fax absentee ballots, though some localities weren’t able to effectively handle the surge in absentee requests. And in parts of New York City, some voters had to cast ballots in tents because of the damage to polling locations.

It’s unlikely that Sandy’s effects altered the presidential outcome, given that both New Jersey and New York were safely Democratic, but turnout was down in areas affected by storm surge in New Jersey. One study from political scientists at Stony Brook University found that the storm possibly helped Barack Obama carry Virginia because of how it affected turnout in parts of the state.

Other disasters like 9/11 have disrupted our elections more dramatically. New York’s primary election was actually scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001, but the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that morning prompted New York Gov. George Pataki to postpone the election, and the state instead held its primaries two weeks later. Obviously, this was an especially extreme case, but the suddenness of the delay is a reminder that sometimes elections can’t go on.

And it’s arguably why states should be preparing now for how voting will work in November. Turnout has usually declined in crisis elections — sometimes dramatically — and Illinois’s diminished turnout last Tuesday demonstrated that it could be challenging to hold an election if COVID-19 is still a significant danger come November, particularly if some states remain reliant on in-person voting.

Edward Foley, an election law expert at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, told me that states need to start adapting their voting systems. “The focus of attention should be on how to conduct a November election that maximizes opportunity for voter participation under current circumstances,” Foley said. “And that means ramping up capacity for vote by mail in states that are not traditionally used to vote by mail.”

However, many states could struggle to adopt vote-by-mail electoral systems because of legal, logistical and election security challenges. These include changing laws to provide more time for delivering, collecting and processing mailed-in ballots, as well as ensuring that a person only votes once. There are seemingly mundane obstacles to be overcome, like getting enough high-quality paper for printing ballots and having enough envelopes! It’s enough to make you wonder if there could even be talk of postponing the 2020 election.

But altering the presidential and congressional elections scheduled for November is very hard. It would require congressional action, and such a move would be unprecedented. Fortunately, state and federal governments have time to get ahead of many potential election challenges stemming from COVID-19. “If [states] start doing that preparation, I don’t anticipate any reason why Congress would want to change the date of the November election,” Foley said.

Whether our leaders will make the necessary changes, however, remains to be seen.

Could the general election be postponed or canceled?
Only with enormous difficulty.

The date of the general election is set by federal law and has been fixed since 1845. It would take a change in federal law to move that date. That would mean legislation enacted by Congress, signed by the president and subject to challenge in the courts.

To call that unlikely would be an understatement.

And even if all of that happened, there would not be much flexibility in choosing an alternate election date: The Constitution mandates that the new Congress must be sworn in on Jan. 3, and that the new president’s term must begin on Jan. 20. Those dates cannot be changed just by the passage of normal legislation.

After Louisiana’s announcement on Friday, Marc Elias, the prominent Democratic election lawyer, knocked down what he described as a wave of queries about whether the November election could be similarly revised.

“I am getting a lot of questions about the November election,” Mr. Elias wrote on Twitter. “While states can set their own primary days, the federal general election is set by federal statute as the the [sic] Tuesday following the first Monday in November. This date cannot be changed by a state nor by the President.”

Can the president cancel or postpone an election with an executive order?
No. The president has a lot of power, but when it comes to elections he is far more constrained than the governor of Louisiana.


What about the procedures for voting in the November election?
While the date of the presidential election is set by federal law, the procedures for voting are generally controlled at the state level.

That’s why we have such a complicated patchwork of voting regulations, with some states allowing early and absentee voting; some permitting voting by mail or same-day voter registration; others requiring certain kinds of identification for voters; and many states doing few or none of those things.

So it is possible that states could revise their voting procedures in response to a public health crisis, perhaps by making it easier to vote by mail or through various absentee procedures that would not require people to cluster together on one particular date.

Washington State, a focal point for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, has conducted elections by mail for years, and its presidential primary on March 10 was able to unfold without disruption.

The federal government could also take steps to mandate or encourage different voting procedures, without changing the timing of the election. Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Irvine, has proposed that Congress require states to offer “no excuse absentee balloting” for the general election, so that anyone can opt to vote by a method besides in-person voting on Election Day.

Have American elections been moved because of emergencies in the past?
Yes, at the state and local level.

It was reported in 2004 that some Bush administration officials had discussed putting in place a method of postponing a federal election in the event of a terrorist attack. But that idea fizzled quickly, and Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, said that the United States had held “elections in this country when we were at war, even when we were in civil war. And we should have the elections on time.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that the date of the state's primary election will be moved from April 28 to June 23 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

That order comes after at least 10 states and one territory have moved their presidential primaries because of the the coronavirus pandemic. Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico have all postponed their primarie

Let's see if Trump will use the virus as an excuse to "postpone" the Presidential election.

Would *you* want to vote amongst hundreds of others that won't maintain their social distance?
If I had to vote, in Australia, I will either be doing a postal vote or cop the fine.
I won't be standing in line in any case.
Bugger that.

The Queensland government over here in Oz is being criticised for going ahead with their election.
Like many over here, I see it as unbelievably irresponsible.

As voting is a right, I could care less if anyone keeps their distance or not. Besides, I vote by mail, so it's a mute point.