Consider This from NPR - Protesting In A Pandemic; The Fight Over Mail-In Voting

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has collided with protests all over the country over police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and many other black Americans. Now public health officials are concerned for the health of protesters. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms even encouraged protesters in her city to get tested.NPR's Pam Fessler reports the legal fight between Democrats and Republicans over mail-in voting has intensified ever since the pandemic hit.Listen to Short Wave's episode about what we will ⁠— and won't ⁠— remember about the pandemic on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and NPR One. Find and support your local public radio stationSign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org The pandemic has now collided with a national protest movement. If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week. This is Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, where, like in so many American cities, lots of people spent the weekend in large crowds in the streets. They were protesting police

violence in the death of George Floyd and so many other Black Americans who have been killed by police. Now public health officials are worried about the protesters' health. Because there's still a pandemic in America that's killing Black and brown people at higher numbers. Coming up, protests can change things. So can elections. But voting is getting harder during the pandemic. This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Monday, June 1st. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms gave that warning on Saturday that protesters should get tested. The next day, she was on CNN, where she said the protests in Atlanta had, for a few days, pushed the coronavirus to the back burner. Well, you know, it's interesting, Jake. Yesterday, around 1130 last night, I realized that I hadn't looked at our coronavirus numbers in two days. And that's frightening because it's a pandemic and people of color are getting hit harder. Around the country, governors, mayors,

local leaders now have multiple urgent and deadly crises to deal with. To keep as many people safe as possible, to protect the rights of protesters to gather, all while managing a pandemic that makes people gathering together less safe. Well, look, there's going to be a lot of issues coming out of what's happened in the last week, but one of them is going to be that chains of transmission will have become lit from these gatherings. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Face the Nation on CBS. And the thing is, some states were already seeing cases go up from the early reopenings, before this past weekend.

This country isn't through this epidemic. This is continuing to expand, but at a much slower rate. But it's still expanding, and we still have pockets of spread in communities that aren't under good control. Whether any of this weekend's protests will lead to clusters of new cases, we won't know that until a few weeks from now. Here's NPR health correspondent Alison Aubrey with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. How, if at all, could protests across the country affect the spread of the coronavirus?

Well, it's too soon to say, but when you have groups of people concentrated together, you have some of the key ingredients for transmission, mainly prolonged close contact and the images of protesters shoulder to shoulder, some with masks, which is good, some not. This certainly raises concerns. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke on NBC about it. I'm concerned that we had mass gatherings in our streets when we just lifted a stay-at-home order. In fact, I'm so concerned about it that I'm urging everybody to consider their exposure if they need to isolate from their family members when they go home and if they need to be tested. There was also disruption of COVID testing in Los Angeles.

They announced a temporary closure of local testing centers over the weekend due to the unrest. So a lot of concern given the close contact, the lack of social distancing. Can people who choose to protest feel a little more safe because they are outdoors when they're protesting? Yes, being outdoors reduces the risk. It's clear that confined indoor environments are more dangerous. But, you know, in recent weeks, there have been outbreaks linked to places we may not expect. It's not just meat processing plants or hospitals.

In Arkansas, there are cases linked to a high school pool party in the town of Paragould. Public health officials there tell me contact tracing is likely ongoing, so they don't know the total number of cases. But it's a reminder that an outbreak can happen anywhere where people are in close, crowded spaces. I spoke to Leif Van Boven. He's a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. And he points out that when you don't know personally anyone infected with the virus, it may be harder to stay vigilant because the threat just seems distant, so far off. It's other cities. It's other kinds of workers. It's other ethnicities. And it's hard to be compelled by something that's totally invisible. And of course, one of the greatest challenges is that if we were to experience a spread of COVID in our community, it would take a couple of weeks to show up.

So we wouldn't know right away. And by the time we realize that something has gone wrong, it will very much be too late. The virus will be spreading. So staying vigilant on social distancing, wearing a mask in public spaces, these are both important. And he says if there were strong leadership promoting these messages in a consistent, science-backed way, that would be helpful. NPR's Alison Aubrey with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. Protests alone cannot change things. That was the argument former President Obama made online today, where he wrote in a Medium post that voting is the essential act. Here's part of what he said, quote, Aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices,

and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands. End quote. President Trump is focused on voting, too. At 8.45 on Monday morning, he wrote on Twitter, in all caps, a two-word post, November 3rd. This year, because of the pandemic, the question of how people can vote might determine who votes. Here's NPR's Pam Fessler. When South Carolina voters cast absentee ballots, they usually have to get a witness to sign the envelope. It's one of about a dozen states that require either that or a notary's signature. But it's a hurdle, as Brenda

Williams, a voting rights activist, explained to one voter she helped during South Carolina's March primary. Like I said, if I don't sign my part of this, then they will throw your ballot out. She warned that without her signature and address on the envelope, his ballot would be rejected. It won't be counted. It would not be counted at all, ever. But a federal judge said that witness requirement put voters' health at risk. She suspended it for the June primary. Williams was a plaintiff in the case, one of dozens around the country challenging similar absentee ballot rules. Dale Ho of the ACLU worked on the suit, along with similar ones in Missouri and Virginia. We know that these signature

requirements have already affected thousands of voters during the pandemic, and our concern is that they'll affect thousands or even tens of thousands more as the election cycle continues. He noted that Wisconsin rejected more than 14,000 absentee ballots in its primary because they didn't have witness signatures. And Hose says the requirement doesn't seem to serve much purpose, something even South Carolina election officials have admitted. They're not relied on by the state in any way to try to verify the authenticity of someone's vote. It just seems like a hoop that they force people to jump through. In this time of uncertainty, we need to have faith in our election process. But Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman

of the Republican National Committee, says such rules are needed to protect against voter fraud. The RNC has launched an aggressive campaign to fight efforts by Democrats to remove the requirements as states expand mail-in voting in response to the pandemic. We believe that many of the lawsuits that they have initiated would destroy the integrity of our election. And that's the debate going on right now in many courthouses and state legislatures as the nation prepares for November. Democrats and their allies are challenging witness requirements in North Carolina, young, minority, and new voters who lean Democratic have their absentee ballots rejected more often than older white voters. David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri, questions the need for some of the rules.

I think it certainly has the effect of discouraging absentee voting, so maybe that's part of the goal too. And with absentee and mail-in voting such a big deal this year, anything that affects who gets to use it will matter a lot. NPR's Pam Fessler. When we're living through what feels like a big moment in history, we know that the way we remember things can change. A 2003 study confirmed this after looking at college students who were in New York on 9-11. People who lived in New York had the most accurate memories of the events themselves, but they actually had worse autobiographical memory compared to those college students in other areas. Shayla Love, a senior

writer at Vice, told NPR that when current events hit you with more emotional significance, you tend to remember them more. And you might even lose focus on the routine stuff in your life, like what you were wearing or what you ate for breakfast. Thinking about what we will remember implies that there will be a point in the future in which we're looking back on this. And I think that's important to remember remember that while you're living through something, it can feel really permanent and stretched out. But there is a point in the future when we'll be past this.

NPR's daily science podcast Shortwave has more on what we will and won't remember about this pandemic. There's a link in our episode notes. For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with all the news on your local public radio station and in our daily coronavirus newsletter, The New Normal. Sign up at npr.org slash newsletters. We'll be back with more tomorrow. I'm Kelly McEvers. With civil unrest, the pandemic, and the economic crisis, you want to know what's happening right when you wake up. And that's why there is Up First, the news you need in about 10 minutes from NPR News. Listen every day.