On Friday, June 5th, Valerie Dowling of Women’s Public Leadership Network (WPLN) hosted Millennial Action Project’s State Caucus Manager, Alexandria Tapia on a webinar to discuss voting by mail in the upcoming November election. They were joined by Jessica Barba Brown from We Can Vote and Kevin Kosar, representing R Street Institute. 

The discussion covered the history of absentee voting, the current state of play across the country, election safety, the impact of COVID-19, as well as potential budgeting and logistic issues. Tapia addressed confusion around terminology, noting that states use differing nomenclature––including absentee and vote by mail––to refer to similar processes of non-election day voting. The panelists all agreed that voting patterns will be very different during the upcoming election, largely in part due to COVID-19. In conjunction with the increase in absentee ballots, states are also preparing to utilize drop off locations and even drive through voting stations. 

There was consensus among the panelists that mail in voting is secure and that any potential voter fraud would be rare and small scale. Tapia argued that protecting constituents’ right to vote and ensuring a legitimate election should be a bipartisan position, seeing as absentee ballots have no inherent partisan benefits. She maintains that one way to do this would be for states to remove the “excuse” requirement for obtaining an absentee ballot. This would mean either moving away from mandatory excuse requirements or permitting COVID-19 as a valid excuse for requesting a ballot. There was also agreement among the panelists that there needs to be an increase in Federal support to ensure that states are prepared. Not only are states beginning to face fiscal issues from the economic impacts of the pandemic, but a major shift in the way that Americans access and return their ballots will require planning and could potentially cause logistical challenges.

Tapia introduced relevant context to the discussion by tying it together with the recent Black Lives Matter protests that have flooded the streets across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd. She pointed out the importance of voting as a way to use one’s voice to make a difference and implement necessary reforms. Voting is a direct and concrete way to make change on both local and federal levels. This underscores the importance that the elections are legitimate and have high voter confidence. The cost of doing an election “right” can appear high, however the cost of doing an election wrong would be much greater.