The 2020 election is going to be different. There is little doubt about that. Unless there is a landslide victory for either former Vice President Joe Biden or current President Donald Trump, we will not know the results of the race on Election Night. Perhaps not even on Election Week. This is unacceptable! Not just because the country will become increasingly skeptical of any result the longer it is delayed, but because that makes for terrible television viewing on election night. This is a presidential election in America--the Super Bowl of electoral politics in the oldest democracy in the world. If nothing else, we demand that it be good tv--and Wolf Blitzer blearily announcing the 343rd KEY RACE ALERT on night thirty-seven of “election night” coverage because a precinct in Wisconsin has just certified another bucket of absentee ballots is not good television. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Despite all the consternation, nothing is really fucked, yet.
Voting in person with a mask and social distancing is no death sentence. Every state, regardless of party affiliation, accommodates voters who don’t want to show up in person. The challenges voters face will not be insurmountable. With just a few simple modifications to the existing plan for each state, everyone can vote in an orderly, safe, and – key for my viewing enjoyment – timely way. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2020. We should be able to find out who won by no later than the time we wake up the following day. Here’s my two-point plan to guarantee that we get a definitive result by breakfast on November 4.
Treat absentee/mail-in voting as early voting. Using an “early voting” frame, you can set the deadline to submit an absentee/mail-in ballot -- by mail -- one week before the actual deadline. You don’t need to change any laws, necessarily. You just need to get the message across that mailing your vote too close to election day is inadvisable.
Expand the early in-person voting period to accommodate the high-volume of voters. This pandemic will strain capacity on election day, if for no other reason than the social distancing that will be required. When a plane is heavy, you extend the runway to achieve a smooth takeoff. The same holds true for elections.
On the first point, it can’t be disputed that absentee voting is anything other than early voting. You literally receive the ballot before election day voters. In my state, Georgia, conventional in-person voting is capped off on the Friday before election Tuesday -- The New York Times has an interactive page that shows the early voting rules for each state. With over two months away from Election Day, there is no reason why anyone who wishes to mail their absentee ballot needs to wait until the very last week to submit their ballot. Democracy may die in darkness, but it should not die in laziness. It’s not too much to ask of voters to get ahead of the last minute shenanigans. Not this year. You have until the very last week of October to mail your absentee ballot. If, for whatever reason, you can’t abide by that generous time-frame, hand-deliver your ballot to the board of elections in your state. Or, vote in person on election day. Perhaps each state could set-up a receptacle at Covid-19 testing sites across the country. Show up to get tested, and then drive down and submit your absentee ballot. Meet voters where they are.
A word of caution for mail-in voters: Be sure to complete your absentee ballot correctly before you send it by mail. According to an NPR story, more than 550,000 ballots were rejected during the primary season this year. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website postulates that Joe Biden voters are significantly more likely to vote by mail than Donald Trump voters. The doomsday scenario is fairly obvious: a few hundred thousand mail in votes spread across a handful of battleground states are rejected for bureaucratic or human-error reasons, and Trump is re-elected by the skin of his teeth despite losing the national popular tally by five million votes. If it looks like Trump would have lost the Electoral College, too, but for a pile of rejected ballots that skew heavily towards Biden, the outcome won’t be seen as legitimate by millions of people. It’s just a form! All of the instructions are right there on the form! Fill it out properly!
If you’re in a red state and a reticent politician feigns concern about possible impropriety, voters could present their ID to an approved notary or any other election functionary when dropping off the ballot. This would bypass the potential issue of absentee ballots getting rejected because of some procedural mishap, such as a missing or mismatched signature. For those voters who do opt to send their ballot by mail at the last minute, they should consider placing a postage stamp. Not because it’s required, but to make sure it gets postmarked. In the New York primary back in June, some last minute ballots were scrutinized and in some cases rejected because they couldn't determine when the ballot was submitted. A postage-free envelope is convenient in most circumstances, but if you need proof of submission, you will run into trouble. The Post Office often does not bother with postmarking pre-paid mail. If you are submitting your ballot at the last minute, be mindful of this logistical hurdle.
A brief aside: Much has been made about the unsettling reports coming out of the Post Office in recent months. By all appearances, there is a concerted effort underway to undermine confidence in mail-in voting. It’s not clear to me if it’s politically advantageous to the Trump campaign. After all, what is so partisan about convenience? Are Republicans any more or less willing to expose themselves to unnecessary harm at the polls? The answer is almost certainly that it varies widely by state.
Also, while on the subject of absentee ballots, it should be noted that just because you receive your ballot by mail, it does not mean it’s necessary for you to return the ballot the same way. Most states afford you the opportunity to hand deliver the mail, or drop it off in some sort of approved box.
On the second point, each state should be more accommodating. Sticking to my “extend the runway” argument from before, if social distancing is the hurdle, you should afford all voters the opportunity to vote at a distance. That requires more space. That requires more time. Expanding early voting extends the runway. If you doubt the veracity of absentee voting, verify voters to your heart's content by giving voters the opportunity to vote over a longer period of time. I can’t imagine what the argument would be against this proposal. You are verifying the voter, just as you would under normal circumstances. You don’t have to authenticate any signature. And whatever time you lose before the election, you make up for it in spades with a timely result.
States should also consider having drive-thru voting sites on election day. They could be set-up at polling locations. Anyone who completed their absentee ballot can show up at their polling location and drop off their ballot without getting out of their car. Once again, the voter’s ID can be verified on the spot, bypassing the need to ascertain the veracity of their signature.
Lastly, each state will need to figure out a way to process the influx of absentee ballots. Many states prohibit the counting of votes until election day. This is a major reason why election races can’t be called for a long period of time--it takes time to manually count the absentee ballots. They need to be verified for accuracy and completeness -- including the signature on both the ballot and the envelope. Each polling precinct should dedicate an entire team to processing these votes by the end of the day, starting at 7am.
These are fairly simple fixes that address the major concerns about safety, both on the health front as well as in terms of election integrity. But in order for this to work, voters must be proactive. They must be willing to take advantage of the myriad ways they can exercise their right to vote. If enough people vote early, either in person or by absentee ballots, election day--and, crucially, my television watching experience--should go off without a hitch.
It almost doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway: a system of representative government that fails to accurately tally who the people want to represent them is not what it claims to be. The fundamental element of electoral legitimacy is an accurate, definitive, and timely outcome. Whoever the winner is, people will be more willing to accept any answer in the hours after polls close, and increasingly less so after weeks of fighting over it--both procedurally, in court, and hysterically, on cable news and social media. The legitimacy of the whole system is potentially at stake. Get it right! For the sake of the republic, yes--but, more importantly, so I won’t have to sit around watching John King fiddle with his magic wall into December.
*It’s too late to fix the 2020 election. We are less than nine weeks away from November 3. The best bet is to vote in person on election day, or as close to normal voting as possible, and hope somebody remembers to fix some of this stuff before 2024.
