In Person Voting Will Be Limited This Election Cycle (Photo Credit: Wikimedia)
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
The new challenges of the coronavirus pandemic have prompted a broad, national conversation regarding the utility and functionality of our elections. While this hallmark of civic engagement is ordinarily conducted through in-person voting at the ballot box, numerous states this year have resorted to a predominantly mail-in system of voting. This is notwithstanding America’s chief coronavirus guru, Dr. Anthony Fauci, unequivocally expressing that with proper social distancing and mask-wearing, there’s “no reason why we shouldn’t be able to vote in person.” Several states have sounded the alarm bells anyhow; they have sent absentee ballots to all active voters in the state. Ostensibly, this plan comes across as a benevolent gesture to facilitate heightened participation in federal and state races, and I assume good intentions. However, this system is flawed — and it will inevitably cause to a lopsided Democratic advantage in the weeks following Election Night, fomenting extreme polarization and staining American political efficacy for years to come.
This past May, by order of Governor Phil Murphy, voters in Paterson, New Jersey cast their ballots for a municipal election through the mail-in process. A bevy of issues met the race from the start; reception of incorrect party ballots, voter fraud on account of deliberate mishandling of ballots by election officials, and sky-high ballot rejection rates for alleged fraud were only some of the developments that mired the city council election with controversy. In addition to a new election date being set, the entirety of the election was invalidated in court, and numerous city councilmembers, one of whom was elected that very night, were confronted with criminal charges.
Looking towards November, the vote-by-mail system’s most optically-jarring ramification will be, as CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has coined, the “red mirage” witnessed on Election Night. A study by Hawkfish/Axios determined that roughly 69% of Biden voters are projected to utilize the mail-in system instead of in-person voting, while the figure sits at 19% for Trump voters. On election night, from sea to shining sea, a tsunami of red will eclipse most regions, from the baby-blue Sun Belt states of Colorado and Nevada to the liberal New England bastions of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The popular vote would follow suit, holding asymmetrically in favor of Trump. The tide will slowly turn in the subsequent days to reveal pockets of blue in Virginia, the Rust Belt, and Arizona, among other states. Trump will tout the initial results as a sweeping referendum on his performance in office and likely hesitate to yield any ground to Biden, who would be awaiting the trickle of votes necessary to place him over the top.
The President’s decision would not be without good reason, as the mail-in-system has been manipulated in previous elections to the demise of Republican candidates through “ballot harvesting,” the tampering of mail-in ballots by unscrupulous intermediaries before being fully counted. Two years ago, a slew of Republican congressmen in historically-red Orange County, California were wiped out by progressive insurgents largely on account of this development. In both the 39th and 45th congressional districts, the GOP candidates held a steady advantage over their respective challengers on election night. Weeks later, as a result of ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots handed victories to the Democratic candidates. A lesson must be learned: widespread plans for a vote by mail would reintroduce the possibility of ballot harvesting and its dangerous downballot consequences for Republicans. The GOP should approach this system with great concern.
In an effort to disseminate mail-in ballots to as many citizens as possible, swing states with Democratic leaders are looking to employ measures which will give them the upper hand. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in mid-September that ballots received up to three days following election day could still be counted. The problems here are obvious. Without extraneous safeguards, ballots collected through the mail system could be manipulated through ballot harvesting. The fallacious “red mirage” that would saturate a state with a powerful Trump advantage during the early returns could push third-party actors in so-called “bellwether areas” of the state to discard Republican ballots, as has been seen in many modern manifestations of ballot harvesting. A separate ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court fortunately rejected ballot harvesting’s implementation — much to the chagrin of state Democrats. But even so, discrepancies abound. The Department of Justice reported on September 24th that they were launching an investigation into the disposal of military ballots in Luzerne County, representing a highly Republican constituency in one of Pennsylvania’s most hotly-contested regions.
The fundamentals of an extensive vote-by-mail system, which nowadays overwhelmingly favor Democrats, bolster such concerns. Given the fact that Election Day is not a paid holiday in most regions of the country, many of those at the core of the party’s base — working and middle class urban people of color — would be unable to accommodate in-person voting due to the strict demands of their jobs, forcing them to vote by mail. Party realignment in the age of Trump will further cement this reality, as middle-aged college-educated whites living in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas have begun to trend more Democratic. Both of these groups will certainly turn to mail-in voting. Senior citizens with ailments or frailties — many of whom have abandoned ship with Trump’s delayed response to the pandemic, as evidenced by recent polling — are sure to turn out in high numbers to vote by mail.
The issue is further complicated by the Democratic partisans who control respective state’s electoral college. Popularly-elected Republican Secretaries of State around the country have upheld an unmitigated standard of transparency and fairness. Most notably, Washington’s Kim Wyman and Kentucky’s Michael Adams have received extraordinary bipartisan praise for their conduct. But overreach from partisan governors and state legislatures, who have moved swiftly in recent months to assume monopolistic control, jeopardize their efforts. In Nevada, Secretary of State Barbara Cevagske stands as the only incumbent Republican elected to a statewide post, though her oversight over November’s election process was effectively usurped by recently-passed NV Assembly Bill 4, which guarantees that each county clerk uniformly distribute “to each active registered voter in the county or city, as applicable, a sample ballot and a mail ballot for the election.” Promptly following the bill’s passage, President Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that the bill “makes voter fraud and other ineligible voting inevitable.” Cegavske’s dual role as Secretary of State and defendant in the case (lawsuits of this sort are often received by a respective state’s Secretary of State) led her to dismiss Trump’s microscopy of Nevada election procedure and suggest he turn his attention towards other states. Surely, though, she could recognize the prudence of the President’s argument.
We, within our student body, must undertake proactive measures to ensure that voting is simple, straightforward, and accessible, despite our remote circumstances. Princeton’s Vote100 initiative has in this regard been a tremendous asset, intending to produce maximal engagement amongst students. As Vote100 has done to great avail, voters must be presented with a dynamic scope of options. Collection of absentee ballots must be encouraged, as in practice, they present the only viable option for American citizens living away from home and/or abroad to vote. In no small part thanks to of Vote100’s stellar outreach, I will submit my absentee ballot.
I urge those at home in good health and mind to travel to a polling station to cast your vote. Get Out to Vote (GOTV) campaigns with regard to CDC guidelines on sanitary practices and social distancing are positive developments. Despite the adversity, we nevertheless wield the levers of power long sought by our ancestors. We will determine the trajectory of our future. And if conditions permit, we must do so in person.
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