"The to-do list includes machinery to print huge numbers of paper ballots, high-speed scanners to count filled-out ballots and a totally revamped security system to ensure no one tampers with the ballots between people’s homes and election offices. In some cases, states that don’t offer no-excuse mail in voting would also have to change their constitutions to do so, Amy and Isaac report."
Washington Post - PowerPost Analysis
The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats see coronavirus stimulus as last, best chance for vote-by-mail push
By Joseph Marks
March 23 at 7:47 AM
With Tonya Riley
THE KEY
Democrats are pushing hard to include a huge expansion of voting by mail in a mammoth coronavirus stimulus bill being crafted on Capitol Hill, arguing the nation is ill prepared to ensure the November contest is conducted safely and securely.
If the virus is still active on Election Day, they worry that could devastate turnout, leading to widespread doubt the outcome reflects the will of the people and damaging faith in the electoral process even more than potential Russian hacking and disinformation. Concerns are rising as seven states have already delayed their presidential primaries because of worries about the health of voters and elderly poll workers.
But, as with the fight against Russian election interference, the move to allow states to hold elections by mail is sparking an ideological battle between Democrats who want to require that states dramatically increase such capabilities and Republicans who consider such top-down mandates government overreach.
The battle over election funding is just one of many sticking points holding up the unprecedented $1.8 trillion rescue package as lawmakers scramble to respond to the pandemic. Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the bill last night out of concern it tilted too far in favor of businesses and lawmakers will be negotiating again this morning.
The price tag for a nationwide vote-by-mail system would likely land between $982 million and $1.4 billion, according to a Brennan Center for Justice analysis. The center estimated it would cost about $2 billion to also make other election improvements such as expanding early voting, maintaining safe in-person voting and making online voter registration easier.
House Democratic leaders are developing a measure including “billions of dollars to expand early voting, increase access to vote by mail, provide for emergency vote by mail and increase access to voter registration,” a Democratic aide told me.
The current Senate bill, meanwhile, includes just $140 million in grants for state and local election officials to “prevent, prepare for and respond to” the virus — but it doesn’t specify how that money should be spent.
“There are a lot of things that one side or another might not be comfortable with under normal circumstances that become politically possible in this crisis. I hope this will be one of them because no one has an interest in the November election being less than 100 percent credible,” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a leader of the House effort, told me.
Advocates fear if states can’t start preparing for a massive nationwide vote-by-mail-operation now, there won’t be another chance before November.
“Very little is going to get done in the next couple of months that isn’t directly related to fighting this epidemic, so it’s important to get it into this must-pass bill,” Malinowski told me. “There are a lot of things we can postpone as we hunker down to address this crisis, but the one thing that we absolutely cannot postpone is the November elections.”
Here's more from Malinowski, who stumped for the vote-by-mail provisions on Twitter:
Rep. Tom Malinowski
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@RepMalinowski
We may be forced to decide that an all vote by mail election is our only choice if we hope to keep people safe and protect the continuity of our democratic elections. The most important thing we can do is enable states to prepare ahead of time -TM https://bit.ly/2QzwYZm
Malinowski fights to ensure November elections are protected amid coronavirus pandemic
Congressman Tom Malinowski, D-7, and Congresswoman Katie Porter, D-Calif., led 56 of their colleagues in sending a letter on Friday, March 20, to Congressional leadership urging them to prioritize the
newjerseyhills.com
Tom Malinowski
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@Malinowski
I led a letter w/55 colleagues urging that our next bill require all states to allow everyone to vote by mail in November. The House is pushing for that to be in final bill. @DLeonhardt https://twitter.com/DLeonhardt/status/1241535104444518401 …
State and local election officials are already clamoring for more money.
In a letter sent last night to House and Senate leaders, 19 election officials including Democratic secretaries of state from Colorado and Arizona call the $140 million in the Senate bill far too little to manage the necessary changes to run the 2020 election during the coronavirus outbreak.
The local election officials who signed the letter include both Democrats and Republicans from Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, California and Ohio, among other states.
“We urge you to include substantial funding in the coronavirus stimulus package so that we have the ability and resources to ensure that our voters can participate safely and with confidence in our elections,” the letter, which was organized by New York University’s Brennan Center, states.
Every state offers some voters an option to mail in ballots, and over half of them allow anyone to mail in a ballot without providing an excuse, such as being in the hospital or out of town on Election Day. Only three states offer mail-in voting as a default, however, and it will require a major bureaucratic lift to establish broad mail-in voting across the nation by November, as my colleagues Amy Gardner and Isaac Stanley-Becker report.
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https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/488705-senators-urge-congress-to-include-election-funds-in-coronavirus-stimulus
Senators urge Congress to include election funds in coronavirus stimulus
BY MAGGIE MILLER - 03/20/20 04:45 PM EDT
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Chris Coons (Del.) urged the leaders of the House and Senate on Friday to include election security funding in an upcoming coronavirus funding package.
“As Congress prepares additional legislation to protect the American people from COVID-19 and provide financial relief, we also must protect our elections,” Klobuchar and Coons wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“Americans are facing unprecedented disruptions to their daily lives, and we need to make sure that in the midst of this pandemic people do not lose their ability to vote,” the senators emphasized.
Klobuchar, the lead Democrat on the elections-focused Senate Rules Committee, and Coons highlighted a report released by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice that called on Congress to appropriate around $2 billion to states to allow the November elections to go forward following the coronavirus pandemic.
The senators noted that this amount would be around 0.2 percent of the more than $1 trillion supplemental appropriations package that Congress is considering to provide aid to Americans and businesses in the midst of the national crisis caused by the spread of coronavirus.
The money would be used to fund printing mail-in ballots, purchasing cleaning supplies for polling sites, and recruiting and training election workers.
Klobuchar and Coons, along with over a dozen other Senate Democrats, introduced a bill earlier this week to allow for Americans to have access to mail-in ballots and boost absentee voting, along with other measures designed to allow the November elections to go forward.
A companion House bill was introduced earlier this month by Democratic Reps. Suzan DelBene (Wash.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), and Jamie Raskin (Md.).
The senators cited this bill in pointing to concerns over recent primaries that saw lower in-person turnouts in Florida, Illinois and Arizona in citing the need to move quickly to provide states with funding to shift elections to allow all Americans to vote without fear of catching the coronavirus.
“Protecting the right to vote is critical – and we can’t let this crisis stop Americans from being heard at the ballot box,” the senators wrote. “Americans cast ballots during the Civil War and after September 11, 2001. No matter the magnitude of the threat facing our country, the most fundamental part of our democracy – our elections – must go on.”