[EL] “How to Protect the 2020 Election from Coronavirus”

Fri Mar 13 14:23:45 PDT 2020

There is no guarantee that a voter’s subsequent choices would not also have withdrawn.

Larry

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of Rob Richie
Sent: Friday, 13 March 2020 1:40 PM
To: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>
Cc: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] “How to Protect the 2020 Election from Coronavirus”

Thanks for this post, Rick.

I thought I'd use this as a chance to lift up the fact that Democratic state parties in four previous caucus states  <https://www.fairvote.org/presidential_primaries_2020> (Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas and Wyoming) will be holding vote-by-mail primaries in the coming weeks. Wyoming until yesterday was planning a hybrid contest of both a primary and caucus, but due to the virus, cancelled the in-person caucuses. Notably, however, the primary allows delegate selection to still happen in a timely way.

To keep one feature of what they liked about caucuses, the parties are having all voters cast ranked choice voting ballots, which are then used to allow "realignment" behind a backup viable choice. (That is, if your first choice has less than 15%, your ballot goes to your next choice until all remaining candidates are viable.)

While that is of more academic interest among active candidates now (with only Biden, Sanders and Gabbard), it's quite meaningful in the sense that these ballots will include a lot of withdrawn candidates. In primaries that have taken place to date, the number of early <https://www.fairvote.org/presidential_primaries_2020>  voters who cast a ballot for a candidate who had withdrawn before the date of their primary is now approximately two million - including the more than $150,000 in Colorado that are simply voided and not counted if cast for an officially withdrawn candidate. In Washington state, its <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/10/us/elections/results-washington-president-democrat-primary-election.html?action=click&module=ELEX_results&pgtype=Interactive&region=Navigation>  latest tally shows more than one in four ballots were cast for withdrawn candidates.

Same thing happened on the GOP side in 2016, albeit no so dramatically -- while the nomination was still in doubt, more than 600,000 ballots <https://www.fairvote.org/why_nearly_a_fifth_of_arizona_gop_voters_were_disenfranchised_by_early_voting_and_how_to_fix_it>  went to candidates who had dropped otu before those voters'' primary.

So in presidential primaries, at least, ranked choice voting and early voting should be hiplocked as policies going forward if we don't want to disenfranchise early voters

On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 3:15 PM Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu <mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu> > wrote:

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109992> “How to Protect the 2020 Election from Coronavirus”

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109992> March 13, 2020 12:06 pm by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

I have written  <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/2020-election-coronavirus-bill-vote-by-mail.html> this piece at Slate. It begins:

On Friday, Louisiana became the first state to  <https://twitter.com/pdmcleod/status/1238510067168743424> announce it would be postponing its April 4 presidential primary. Meanwhile, officials in the next four states to hold primaries  <https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1238522828615561222> announced the votes would go forward this coming Tuesday. With the democratic primary contest winding down of its own momentum, how to hold an election during a pandemic may feel at the moment like one of the less urgent questions. With our national election just less than eight months away, though, it is not. Congress can and should act to secure the ability of voters to cast ballots this November sooner rather than later.

Most immediately, in light of the uncertain time frame for disruption of life and political activities due to the Coronavirus, Congress should pass a law requiring states to offer no-excuse absentee balloting for the November elections. Congress has the power to do so, and it should fully fund the efforts. The bill has to be drafted carefully to protect all voters. But time is short. For this to happen, it must happen quickly.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D109992&title=%E2%80%9CHow%20to%20Protect%20the%202020%20Election%20from%20Coronavirus%E2%80%9D> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> election administration

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