Title: 8 Big Reasons Election Day 2020 Could Be a Disaster - POLITICO
Headings: 8 Big Reasons Election Day 2020 Could Be a Disaster
The Friday Cover
8 Big Reasons Election Day 2020 Could Be a Disaster
People often deploy the “perfect storm” metaphor incorrectly, using it to describe a surprise collision of events that catches its victims off guard.
“My biggest concern for the fall election is an election administrator’s job is to convince the losers that they lost.”
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The entire city of Milwaukee, which normally has 180 polling places, opened just five in April’s primary.
Right now there are so many variables it’s impossible to predict how these problems will affect the results.
“Election officials are always resource-starved—not just personnel, but in terms of IT and personal bandwidth.”
Of course, with competent election officials, good government, and planning, none of this has to result in disaster.
Everyone who loved the “hanging chads” debate of 2000 should steel themselves for the “what does that fuzzy postmark say?” debate of 2020.
On a broader scale, the pandemic has also caused a massive, national geographic disruption.
Will college students vote by mail?
As we learned in 2016, foreign adversaries only need to suggest that they’ve successfully altered votes in order to cast doubt on the entire process.
“We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think—I think it puts the election at risk.”
Democrats and Republicans alike are openly wondering now: What happens if Donald Trump refuses to concede?
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Stranger things have indeed happened, as it turns out.

Content: These changing and shifting policies—which will likely change and shift right up until Election Day—will, like the pandemic itself, have hugely unpredictable effects on who actually votes, skewing not just the vote totals but making polling and turnout models less reliable, and making even legitimate returns appear suspiciously different than anticipated. Right now, there are so many variables it’s impossible to predict how these problems will affect the results. Vulnerable poorer and minority populations are generally the most affected by the closure and rearrangement of polling places, but in Atlanta, the NBA Hawks are offering up their arena for a socially distanced voting location and challenging other NBA teams to do the same, which might conversely mean that urban voters have better access to polling machines than suburban voters. Meanwhile, older, conservative voters—particularly in states that have not made accommodations for the pandemic—will find themselves having to think hard about the risk of standing in line to vote in person, especially in the Southern states that seem least inclined to make allowances for the pandemic. Back to Navigation
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A Whirlwind of New Technology and New Processes
To head off all those polling-place problems, many states are racing to update their voting procedures to allow for expanded absentee balloting or even full vote-by-mail. Coming into 2020, five states—Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Colorado and Utah—were already planning to conduct their voting entirely by mail, giving them all manner of protection in a year of unknowns. Now, dozens more are scrambling to adjust their voting procedures mid-pandemic, lifting restrictions on absentee ballots and encouraging voters to vote by mail—all the while racing the clock. “Election officials are always resource-starved—not just personnel, but in terms of IT and personal bandwidth.” This puts huge pressu