Quarantined Voter

 

This year faces the addition of a global pandemic to the voting for a new president. There will be an unusual lager, maybe even record-breaking number of mail-in ballots this season. But unknown to millions of Americans are still hidden hurdles to get over to have your vote registered. Your ballot needs two stamps to get sent to the proper location and you limited time to fill it out and send it back before the transit time will take to long for your vote to be counted. IF you forget to sign the ballot envelope or if you sign the envelope but your signature isn’t the same or matched to the one that's on file with the elections office, or if some of the information entered is misread by an election official a mail-in ballot can be discarded.

The United States Election Assistance Commission reported in 2016 more than 300,000 mail-in ballots were rejected. With the rise in mail-in ballots in 2020, the number of rejected ballots would be even higher with some estimates predicting it could be a million or more. More polling places where people can show up in person to cast their vote will not suddenly appear and most poll workers are over 60 years old making them extremely vulnerable to the COVID-19. In response to this, in Wisconsin, roughly 7,000 poll workers said they would not work during the April election due to health concerns.         

    This isn’t the first time that the United States has attempted to operate elections during an emergency situation of public health before. During 1918 a similar situation was underway where public gatherings were limited due to the flu pandemic and the population was in quarantine. A similar scamper to insure a fair election followed and resulted in some hiccups. One example was when a local election in Idaho was changed after votes that originated from a different polling place that was created to allow students and teachers to vote was disregarded and thrown out after the Idaho Supreme Court deemed the ballets that came from the station were illegitimate. 

    If we can learn from our mistakes it would be assumed that this time around we can avoid the looming situation where a majority of Americans cannot vote or their voice isn’t heard. But will we? With such a big and debated election coming up is CVOID-19 becoming an excuse for further voter suppression? Will all the resources that the United States and knowledge/experience through the years of learning from experience not be enough to solve the problem? The citizens would hope that they would be granted the right of equal opportunity to vote for the leader of the nation where the voices of everyone who wanted them to be heard would be. If we continue down this path it will lead into a politically stormy year with potentially Trump or Biden exploding the pandemic for their own political party’s benefit.