The 2020 presidential election is set to be one of the most controversial and unprecedented election cycles in all of American history. Between fears of results taking weeks to come out and worries about widespread voter suppression, it is easy to see why almost half of eligible Americans are concerned about whether this November election will be free, fair and accessible. As these concerns compound with the coronavirus pandemic and upheaval over racial inequality, the United States must seek to address its problems by empowering people to have a stake in the electoral process. This can only be accomplished through reform: 2020 has the opportunity to stimulate massive improvements in the American electoral system, from the expansion of mail-in ballots and automatic voter registration to the removal of voting barriers through litigation.
Efforts to increase voter presence in 2020 are not without precedent. Following the 2016 presidential election — in which Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but Republican candidate Donald Trump secured enough electoral votes to win the presidency — Democrats were outraged. In the 2018 midterm elections, voters of all stripes, and young voters especially, turned out in a “blue wave” that swept Democrats back into the House and turned many races across the map into competitive toss-ups. Voting rights groups and electoral reform advocates spurred these record-setting gains by focusing on improving accessibility to registration leading into the 2018 election. In Florida, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition pushed for a referendum that successfully returned voting rights to people convicted of felonies, massively expanding the eligible voting population there. A number of ballot initiatives implemented same-day voter registration in many states, easing access to the polls for many underserved communities. These groups’ success two years ago has made the current election cycle an opportunity to expand the types of electoral reform they are advocating for.
This year’s voter registration efforts, while limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, have tapped into a rising enthusiasm for political engagement and helped expand traditionally limited alternatives to in-person voting such as mail-in ballots. Despite concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic would limit voter registration efforts, results thus far have been encouraging to voting rights advocates. During this period of heightened excitement surrounding political participation, the pandemic has placed an emphasis on voting by mail in order to engage people safely. Even with recent comments from the president questioning the security of mail-in voting, many Americans plan to mail in their ballots for this year’s election.
With these changes to people’s voting plans, many politicians have attempted to cast doubt on the legitimacy of mail-in voting or paint it as favorable to one side or another. President Trump has peddled these theories, stating, “This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen,” and stirring worry about the potential for a contested or fraudulent election. However, numerous studies have shown that mail-in voting is just as or even more resistant to voter fraud than traditional voting methods. Additionally, mail-in voting has been shown not to offer an advantage to one party over the other, but rather to increase turnout among all groups.
Not only is mail-in voting nonpartisan and democratic, but it is also widely popular among Americans, especially this year. More than half of Americans support no-excuse mail-in voting and over a third of Americans plan to vote with mail-in ballots. This level of popular support for voting by mail is underscored by the successes of states with almost exclusively mail-in systems and the turnout increases in primary elections that relied on mail-in ballots.
Mail-in voting also offers another significant benefit over in-person voting: the elimination of waiting in line at the polls. Long wait times disportionately affect people of color. A shift to voting by mail not only helps keep these voters healthier in the face of the pandemic — which they have also been overwhelmingly suffering from — but also allows them easier and quicker access to the political process. In Milwaukee’s primary election this April, the state closed a large number of its polling places, significantly increasing wait times in the predominantly marginalized city. Wait times climbed to an average of 1 1/2 hours, with some voters having to wait upward of 2 1/2 hours to cast a ballot. Given that the United States has had a long history of suppressing minority voters, mail-in ballots could remedy the disparity between the number of eligible voters of color and those who actually vote.
In addition to promoting mail-in voting, a number of advocates have also praised automatic voter registration as a source of voter roll growth in recent years as well. Automatically adding voters to the rolls removes the burden and obstacles of registration — forms, deadlines, signatures matches, photo identification — from the voter themselves. Similarly to no-excuse absentee voting, automatic voter registration encourages participation from voters in underserved communities, including minorities, lower-income residents and those who live in rural areas. As states have begun to recognize the structural barriers present in their systems, 39 of them have introduced automatic voter registration legislation since 2016. These states should be encouraged by the results from those that have already implemented automatic voter registration: Oregon saw registration nearly quadruple after a new 2016 law and Vermont’s automatic voter registration program helped increase registration in 2017. By lowering barriers to voting across the United States, elections could become more reflective of a larger percentage of Americans — in 2016, only 56% of the voting age population participated in the presidential election. Experts project that this number could increase to 65% alone this year with the expansion of early and absentee voting.
The 2020 election offers an opportunity for the United States to invest in better voting infrastructure and the removal of barriers to voting in historically disenfranchised populations. With this election cycle, voting turnout is already nearing or exceeding the levels seen in 2016: in Texas, 57.3% of registered voters turned out early in comparison to the 59.4% in 2016, and Wisconsin shattered a statewide early voting record with 1.9 million ballots. This level of participation and enthusiasm would not be possible without the rapid expansion of mail-in voting and litigation to ease or extend the registration processes in many states. Legal challenges to archaic voting restrictions have arisen in 42 states and D.C. These changes have benefited many groups that have not always been able to turnout — young voters and black voters have already surpassed their respective 2016 levels at this point in the election. Some in-person voting sites and online systems have struggled with the high demand this cycle, which is all the more reason to improve both the physical and digital infrastructure surrounding voting.
This year, it is even more imperative to increase access to polls for all people, especially given the effects of the coronavirus and the differing responses and styles of the two presidential candidates. The United States must invest in more robust mail-in voting systems and implement universal voter registration and the option of no-excuse absentee voting. The future of the nation and its democratic institutions are dependent on a government being “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That must include all of them.
Image by Tiffany Tertipes is licensed under the Unsplash License.