Republicans are engineering an electoral disaster this fall

AFTER A shambolic election two years ago — and several examples of poorly run primaries leading up to this week — one might have imagined that Georgia would have prepared better for its Tuesday primary vote. Instead, polling places in and around Atlanta were swamped and lines stretched for hours as poll workers struggled with new voting machines and sanitation procedures. Georgia’s experience confirmed that the coronavirus pandemic, combined with the sort of Election Day incompetence that has for years been a sad fixture of American democracy, threatens the integrity of the November presidential election. There is hardly anything more important than getting voting procedures and technology right over the next five months.

Unfortunately, many Republican politicians continue to manipulate voting rules for partisan advantage, exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to suppress voting. The latest example is in Iowa. The state held a notably successful primary last Tuesday that smashed turnout recordsdespite the closure of many polling places, in large part because the state’s Republican secretary of state sent every voter an absentee ballot application. That allowed local officials to consolidate in-person voting locations without causing the sorts of massive backups that marred primaries in Wisconsin, the District and Georgia.
Republican lawmakers in Iowa saw that success and apparently concluded that it should not be repeated. Just days after the primary, a state Senate committee advanced a bill that would bar the secretary of state from sending out absentee ballot applications to voters who have not requested them. Though voters in many states have complained that they never got the absentee ballots they requested, the Iowa legislation would make it harder for election officials to process absentee voter requests. It would also ban them from consolidating many polling places, even though the pandemic is likely to lead to a pressing shortage of poll workers and intensive pandemic precautions should be observed. The Des Moines Register points out that these moves come on top of the legislature’s probably illegal efforts to force felons to pay restitution before being able to vote. Continue reading.