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POLITICSfeature, not a bug. For instance, Trump and con-
gressional supporters such as Senator Roy Blunt
of Missouri have opposed mail-in balloting on the
grounds that it invites fraud, in spite of studies that
clearly indicate otherwise, as well as the self-evident
importance of allowing citizens to vote without
fear of infection.
The pandemic has in fact driven up voter inter-
est in mail-ins on both sides—but it may be too
late to make the adjustment. Setting up a mail-in
ballot system efficient enough to handle a large per-
centage of a state’s voters takes years, says Kathleen
Hale, an Auburn University political scientist and
election expert who works with officials through-
out the country to help ensure elections go smoothly.
Nevertheless, in response to the pandemic, dozens
of states, including New York, have tried to vastly
expand their mail-in capabilities—from supplemen-
tary absentee ballots to universal access—virtually
overnight. They could face serious problems with
the distribution, collection and counting of those
ballots, says Hale, co-author of How We Vote: Inno-
vation in American Elections(Georgetown University
Press) “There’s substantial risk in trying to change
the system on the fly,” she says.
Twelve states have passed legislation since March
making it easier to vote by mail, but battleground
states have drawn the most scrutiny. Small shifts
in voting in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Geor-
gia, Michigan and North Carolina could swing
15 or more electoral votes one way or the other.
The Texas governor and its Republican legislative
majority have fought to block any expansion of
mail-in voting. A pro-mail-in-vote group sued the
state and won in a federal court, only to be over-
turned in a higher court when the state appealed.
Pennsylvania gets a C from the Brookings Insti-
tute’s mail-in-voting accessibility scorecard. So
does Georgia, which sent out mail-in ballots for
its primary. Under pressure from the Republican
state legislature, however, the state does not plan
to follow suit in the general election. Michigan gets
a B, but Trump has threatened to withhold federal
funds if the state doesn’t back off its support for
voting by mail. Trump has so far refrained from
making similar threats against Florida over its
embrace of mail-in voting, perhaps because it’s
where he himself votes—by mail, at least in the
case of this year’s primary. In states that succumb
to Republican pressure to hang onto restrictions
on mail-in ballots, most voters will have only one
option, says Hale: to endure long lines at the polls.
Meanwhile, many red states and counties have
intensified their long tradition of making voter
registration difficult and fleeting. Since 2016, 23
states have enacted legislation raising the bar on
registration, such as narrowing the forms of accept-
able identification or requiring registered voters
to repeatedly re-register, according to the Brennan
Center for Justice. With the exception of Rhode
Island, every one of those states is red. Trump can’t
afford to lose any but the smallest of them if he’s
going to maintain a path to victory.
In what looks like an effort to further influence
the turnout, red states and counties have found
ways to underserve Democratic strongholds with
access to polling places. In 2016, the wait in polling
places serving predominantly Black neighborhoods
was nearly a third longer than those serving white
neighborhoods, according to one study. “Officials
are weaponizing election budgets to selectively
close or increase the wait at polling places near the
voters they don’t like,” says Philip Stark, a University“THE MORE YOU RELY ON TECHNOLOGY FOR
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