Voting Rights

“I am trying to see today as an opportunity to show the cracks in the system that we can fix before November,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for voting rights group Common Cause. Albert said there is concern that in the November election, people who request absentee ballots will not receive them, and there will be fewer polling places as counties consolidate them in response to the pandemic. “There needs to be a rational level of consolidation that ensures that communities who especially have not used vote by mail in the past or cannot use vote by mail — such as disabled communities or people without addresses, homeless, transient — that there are enough polling locations to serve those people,” Albert said.

“The big story out of Pennsylvania is really voter confusion,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of government watchdog Common Cause Pennsylvania. ... In Indiana, voting rights groups said they heard from many people who reported they never received the absentee mail ballots they had requested. “That certainly contributed to long lines in Marion County,” said Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana. Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, consolidated its polling places and had only 22 open on Tuesday.

“The big story is really voter confusion,” said Suzanne Almeida, who leads Common Cause Pennsylvania, on a call with reporters. ... In Philadelphia, a small scattering of polling locations opened late because of missing poll books or other minor issues that happen most years, Almeida said. In one predominantly African American area of Pittsburgh, voters complained of feeling intimidated by having to cast ballots in a polling location that also houses a police department during a time of tension between black residents and law enforcement.

“We are seeing and feeling the effects of the police response to the protests over the last few days,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. She cited the city convention center, where 18 polling locations had been condensed into one, as having a significant presence of National Guard troops, “which is obviously a deterrent to voters.”

Julia Vaughn, policy director for the government accountability group Common Cause Indiana said voters faced navigating a variety of deadlines for main-in balloting that a great number had never faced before. “We expect the majority of votes to be cast by mail but we’re not a vote-by-mail state, so we’ve had to make this up as we go along,” Vaughn said.

This presidential election year, Americans need solutions so they don't have to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote. On Tuesday morning polls will open for primaries in eight states and Washington, D.C., and election officials are making final preparations to keep voters and election workers safe. Contests in four of those states were postponed during the coronavirus pandemic, which is why the day is being labeled as another Super Tuesday. And so this is an important moment for a closer look at states that already vote by mail. My home state of Oregon is ranked first: 99 percent of us voted from home in the 2018 midterm election, more than any other state.