It was a rough primary season. The general election could be worse.
CONGRESS HAS several urgent tasks and little time to complete them. One is to help ensure the legitimacy of the nations democracy by giving the states the assistance they need to hold an election during a pandemic.
Certainly the states should not be left to struggle through the November election as they have through primary season, with fiascoes in places as different as D.C., Georgia, New York and Wisconsin. The problems were varied: long lines; no-show election workers; massive polling place closures; confused voters; unclear mail-in voting procedures; failure to count ballots within a reasonable amount of time; election website collapses; unnecessary voting requirements. The common denominator was state leaders who blundered their way through a coronavirus election and a federal government that has long failed to encourage high standards through funding and guideline-setting.
Elections in the United States were already an international embarrassment, with underfunding and incompetence in too many jurisdictions. Now, in the absence of thoughtful preparation, voters may have to risk their lives to exercise their right to vote. Thats unacceptable. The fear of catching covid-19 will deter voters, unless the government assures people they can vote safely.
Congress has frittered away months instead of helping states buy new machines to process and count mail-in ballots. Those would be helpful in a state such as New York, where primary results took weeks to be reported. Now, states options are increasingly limited because time is short, and the challenge will be even larger than the one states faced over the past few months. Even states that managed their primaries relatively well may see their systems overloaded when double the number of people seek to vote in the general election.
Republicans have tended to resist federal involvement in running elections, arguing that this is a state and local responsibility. Underlying that objection may be a fear that higher levels of voting hurts Republicans, a calculation that has led the GOP to erect innumerable barriers to voting over the past decade. But the need is too obvious and the stakes too high for further delay or craven partisanship. It is in fact unclear whether more mail-in voting hurts or helps the GOP. But that should not matter; if Republicans believe in their ideas and candidates, they should seek to put them to a fair democratic test.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/it-was-a-rough-primary-season-the-general-election-could-be-worse/2020/07/20/cd13c34c-cabc-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)the polls close. With more mail-in votes out there and fewer polling places in many areas, there shouldn't be any conclusions drawn until long into the night or into the next day. The more hurry, the more likely to have errors. Concessions really shouldn't be made until the next day. Anyone who wants to rush the process along probably has a trick up his sleeve.
appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)It's a real mess, embarrassing elections befitting a flawed democracy with divisions, dysfunction and multiple problems. Every possible obstacle will be employed to influence the Nov. election. Things here have to change.
A Clear n Present D
(32 posts)Which is why we have to give no quarter and show no mercy to Trump and the Trumpublican Party.