New York Times: Voting by Mail Could Be What States Need. But Can They Pull It Off?

WASHINGTON — When Colorado’s 3.5 million voters help select a president this fall, their choice will be made almost entirely by mail, via ballots in postage-paid envelopes dropped off in mailboxes or, more commonly, in bins scattered statewide.

Not so in Alabama. As the law now stands, all voters must cast their ballots on Election Day, at their designated polling places, unless they vote absentee. And getting an absentee ballot is so hard that fewer than 55,000 of 1.7 million voters cast one in the last election.

Election experts, voting rights advocates and a chorus of Democrats are urging states to switch as much as is possible to voting by mail for the November election. Their aim is to ensure that the vote is not plagued by the same nightmare scenario that occurred this week in Wisconsin of voters in masks and gloves going to polls — or staying home — amid the coronavirus pandemic. …

Republicans needn’t fear losing any perceived electoral edge, he and others said, because the coming election already is so epochal that expanded mail-in balloting is unlikely to attract many new voters. Democrats could remove another concern by limiting voting by mail only to the November election, to eliminate complaints that they were trying to lock in a permanent advantage.

“As this becomes more partisan, each political party is going to go to its corner,” said Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a leading voting rights advocate. “But there’s a way to find the middle.

“We have to get the ball moving now,” she added, “or Wisconsin is going to be what November looks like everywhere.”