Postponing An Election: Prudent or Bad Precedent?

A key principle of an election’s legitimacy is that the public knows when, where, and how the election will take place and that it is widely accessible to qualified voters. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has struck in the middle of various election contests and states now confront difficult, last-minute questions about how or when to run their planned elections.

There are unprecedented and difficult decisions to make. Should elections move forward as planned or be postponed until the virus is more under control? Should they go on only with absentee voting and no in-person voting? Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio faced precisely these decisions in the lead up to their primary elections this week. Postponing an election, especially a primary, does not have to be a legitimacy crisis, but there are certain steps states should take to avoid doing so imprudently.

For most of the country, voting involves showing up to sometimes crowded polling places, waiting in line, sharing the use of technology and pens, and generally being closer than six feet from groups of more than 10 people at a time. This is a nightmare for the social distancing necessary to flatten the curve and reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In a few states, voting absentee—by mail or drop off ballot—is the primary method of voting, while the rest of the country varies in its availability. Nationwide, only 23.7% of all votes were cast by mail in 2016.

Ohio was the lone state among the Tuesday contests that did not proceed, instead making a late-in-the-night decision to postpone until June. Some raise concerns that postponing primary elections sets a bad precedent for delaying the November general election, and suggest that alternative measures could have been taken:

“…including expanding early and absentee voting, moving polling places out of senior living communities and training volunteers in how to disinfect polling stations. These remedies may be adequate; a more robust response would require a significant investment by states, including massively expanding the number of polling stations (to reduce voter congestion), hiring professional election administrators to staff the polling stations and training them for the current health crisis.”

Undoubtedly, though, each of these measures would take days, if not weeks or months, to implement. Especially for states with less absentee voting, standing up or expanding such systems will not happen overnight. If a contest is tomorrow or next week, what should a state do?

If a state chooses, in accordance with state and federal law, to postpone an election there are two key considerations for maintaining the contest’s legitimacy: 1) it should not be done at the eleventh-hour and 2) there needs to be a defined plan for how the election will proceed later.