The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has already thrown the 2020 primary season into disarray.
, leaving states grappling with a slew of underlying logistical hurdles embedded in the administration of the voting process.
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, all 50 states submitted funding request letters for grants apportioned through the $400 million included in the Help America Vote Act, which was a component of the CARES Act. As of April 7, the Election Assistance Commission says it had “obligated 100% of the funds,” and as of April 20, it had “disbursed 75% to the states.” The funds are disbursed within four or five days of receiving a state’s request letter.
Jim O'Bryan drops of his election ballot in the drop box at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, in Cleveland.Election experts and secretaries of states where elections are conducted by mail voting largely disagree with the idea that mail ballots are more prone to tampering or fraud. Even so, the process of conducting an all-mail election presents a series of detailed steps.
“If there's a public service announcement that I could do, it's that everybody who's going to vote by mail needs to read the instructions very carefully and follow those instructions to make sure that your ballot will be counted,” says Michael McDonald, an elections expert and political science professor at the University of Florida.
Experts also note that a crucial component of administering effective voter communication would include informing people of any changes to the voter registration process well ahead of November. “You're going to have the parties and campaigns act as backstops for what the election officials are doing,” he said.People check in to vote at a polling place on April 7, 2020, in Sun Prairie, Wis.Day-to-day lifestyle changes due to the coronavirus pandemic also loom large in ABC News' analysis of provided funding requests.
Weiser also backed that sentiment, saying, “We're still going to have polling places, no matter what and we still need to have them.” “There's a range of other innovations that are happening right now that will add significantly to the cost of running the election that we did not cost out,” Weiser said, adding, “[The estimate] should be viewed as a floor, not as the entirety of it, but I think it was to add some real concreteness to the kinds of expenses that states were going to have.”
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