Nonetheless, NVAHI has the difficult role of trying to advise state officials and lawmakers of what to do while encountering layers of resistance for adopting their preferred voting method: partisan opposition to expanded balloting, administrative challenges, budgetary constraints and little time to prepare for upcoming elections. Legislatures that haven't looked at updating their voting rules or have not acted have left many election officials without clear rules or funds for voting this fall.
When asked for examples of progress, NVAHI's responses revealed that elections evolve incrementally. For example, they said that Pennsylvania might adopt one of its suggestions, a tool that helps voters to track ballots in the mail like people track Amazon packages. Some Wisconsin counties were eyeing the same tool, NVAHI said. But that step, as helpful as it may be, was only one of the 12 "categories that we determined to be the foundation of a vote by mail system," its assessment said.
Their other 11 foundational categories and concerns included: do voters need to give an excuse to obtain an absentee ballot -- and does COVID-19 qualify? Does the state have good enough "data integrity" to mail all registered voters a ballot? Does it have online voter registration? Does it have online absentee ballot request forms, or must voters submit paper forms? Does the state pay for postage on ballot applications and ballot return envelopes? Does it have other return options, such as drop boxes? Do state deadlines allow for all of the processing -- applying for, sending, receiving, vetting and counting ballots -- to be completed? Does the state have a uniform signature verification process (before taking ballots out of envelopes)? Does it have processes to allow voters to fix mistakes? Does it count ballots postmarked on Election Day that arrive later? Does it mail ballots to voters?
In a report prepared for the Wisconsin Election Commission's May 20 meeting, statewide administrators said that 120,989 ballots -- 9.3 percent of the 1.3 million ballots sent to voters for April's primary -- were not returned or counted. That figure was lower than the national non-return rate of mail-based ballots in 2018, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Standing up absentee voting systems is more complex than debuting a new voting machine. NVAHI's list also was not the full picture of what awaits voters. Other national groups, such as the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, have compiled charts with every state's voter registration and absentee balloting laws, applications and filing deadlines. Some of these rules are the subject of more than two-dozen federal lawsuits by the Democratic Party, which seeks to reverse or suspend pre-COVID-19 requirements such as that an absentee ballot envelope must have a witness signature or be notarized.
Voting rights activists also look at the emerging absentee voting landscape differently than policy experts. Instead of seeing what needs to be done to have a functional process, advocates such as Progressive Democrats of America and Advancement Project, a civil rights law group, have been discussing what can go wrong for voters -- and how to educate voters so that they can vote and their ballots count.
These discussions have identified voter information that is not readily available. For example, Voting Booth has yet to find a table of which states allow people to register to vote and to receive an absentee ballot at the same time. (In most states, one has to register first, wait until they are added to voter rolls, and then apply for an absentee ballot; all of which cannot be done at the last minute.)
Grassroots groups are also scrambling to compile state-by-state advice on what to tell voters to do if they have applied for an absentee ballot and it does not arrive. Must they go to a polling place and vote with a provisional ballot? Those ballots are the last to be counted and are rarely audited when assessing vote count accuracy.
In short, most stakeholders -- voters, advocacy groups and election officials -- are scrambling to stand up new systems and fill in the blanks. Against this backdrop, the Bipartisan Policy Center report subtly suggested that many states might not have the ability to accommodate a surge in absentee voting.
"States that choose to push more voters toward this option must address policy, implementation, and capacity issues on an extraordinarily short timeline," Thomas and Weil wrote for BPC. "Regardless of what decisions are made, we strongly believe by November there will be high voter interest in the presidential election; voting by mail will likely represent well over half the ballots cast; and some amount of Election Day voting will continue but may be very different than normal."
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