Washington Post: Election officials in both parties call for emergency funding to expand voting by mail before November

03.24.2020 / By Amy Gardner, Elise Viebeck and Joseph Marks
Washington Post: Election officials in both parties call for emergency funding to expand voting by mail before November

Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said she expected the legislature to be receptive to recommendations from voting rights advocates. But whatever happens, she said, officials must clearly communicate their decisions to the public. “People are sitting at home, and they are anxious,” Turcer said, arguing that confusion about elections “just compounds people’s worries” about the covid-19 crisis. “There are pros and cons of all sorts of decisions we could make here, but what we really do need is that clarity.”

A bipartisan push to expand mail-in voting is underway across the country as election officials brace for a spike in demand from voters spooked by the coronavirus pandemic — despite Republican opposition in Washington to help pay for it.

House Democrats have asked for as much as $2 billion in emergency funding to distribute to election officials who are scrambling to expand absentee balloting and take other steps to avoid pandemic-related chaos on Election Day in November.

Dozens of state and local election officials, both Republican and Democratic, have signaled their desire for the funding — a sign of how the crisis is altering the usually sharply divided politics around voting measures.

Still, Republicans in Washington say they are inclined to oppose an effort to include the funding and new rules on how states run their elections in a $2 trillion coronavirus response package, with some casting the effort as part of a Democratic strategy to try to load up the bill with unrelated pet priorities. …

Voting advocates — and election officials in both parties — see it differently. They predict a colossal surge in demand for early and mail-in balloting by voters seeking to protect themselves against the highly infectious coronavirus. Preparing for it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a cost directly related to the pandemic, they say. …

Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said she expected the legislature to be receptive to recommendations from voting rights advocates. But whatever happens, she said, officials must clearly communicate their decisions to the public.

“People are sitting at home, and they are anxious,” Turcer said, arguing that confusion about elections “just compounds people’s worries” about the covid-19 crisis. “There are pros and cons of all sorts of decisions we could make here, but what we really do need is that clarity.”

See More: Voting RightsVoting & ElectionsVoting & Elections