Rough Voting Ahead as Covid-19 Pandemic Impacts Voting
Voting will be tough this year for many as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact our society and lifestyles on an unprecedented scale. Whether here at home in Oregon or across the US, many states have begun to take steps to change how voting in the 2020, will take place with a large increase in the ability to vote from home through the mail.
The largest campaign to halt the spread of the virus is the use of social distancing and stay at home measures, which means people should stay roughly two to three meters or six to nine feet apart from one another while outside of their homes.This means that people should also not to leave their homes for any non-critical reasons. This alone has caused massive impacts on all major social events such as sporting events, conventions, and our day to day jobs. As time passed, it was clear that this issue was also going to have an impact on voting as well and states had to act fast with many having their primaries only weeks away. Oregon itself has its primary election on May 19th while some states have already voted in their primaries using this method, such as Alaska.
Benefits to voting by mail is the capability to reach those who would have not originally voted due to disabilities or accessibility reasons on top of public health safety reason. Many voters are older in age. Covid-19 has a case fatality rate of 1.3% for ages 50-59, 3.6% for ages of 60-69, 8% for ages 70-79, and 14.8% for ages 80 or above as of the end of March.
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