The NPR Politics Podcast - New Coronavirus Cases At Record Levels; 75 Million Americans Have Voted.

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Nearly 70 thousand Americans test positive every day for the coronavirus, a new high. And after the pandemic drove an evolution in voting habits, more than 75 million Americans have already cast their ballots.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, health correspondent Allison Aubrey, voting reporter Miles Parks, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Teal in Denver, Colorado. I just got finished watching the World Series where the Dodgers finally won. I've been waiting for them to win for 32 years, ever since I was born. This podcast was recorded at 2.39 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, October 28th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but one thing is for certain, I will be in Denver celebrating with all the rest of the Dodgers fans around the world. Go Dodgers! That's great. There's something else in the world other than politics.

Congrats to you. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. As we head into the fall, the number of COVID cases are on the rise again. Over the last week, an average of 70,000 Americans have tested positive each day. That's a new all-time high. The entire general election has also been waged against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. And now that election comes to an end in just six days. So given those dynamics, we wanted to invite our health

correspondent, Alison Aubrey, to join us on the show again. Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. So I'm actually out on the campaign trail with Joe Biden in Delaware. Well, frankly, I'm actually grabbing lunch right now, so I'm on a bit of a lunch break in my car. On the side of the road. Been there, done that. Adjacent to I-95, so you all may hear some highway traffic in the background. But but, you know, earlier today, Biden had this public health briefing and one of the experts that briefed him made this comment that there is no doubt we are now in the midst of the third wave. Is that what's happening in the U.S. right now? You know, call it what you want, but cases are surging.

I mean, the U.S. has been averaging about 73,000 new cases per day. This is more than a 30 percent increase compared to just two weeks ago. There are hot spots throughout the Midwest, including Wisconsin, Illinois, and in the Rocky Mountain states. There's just no question that the virus is circulating widely. Hospitalizations have been on the rise. And on average, about 775 people per day in the U.S. are dying from COVID-19. Yeah, it seems tragic, but not completely surprising that the campaign's final days are being consumed by this new COVID spike, especially in swing states. This entire campaign has been dominated by the outbreak, whether it's surging cases or the outbreak of COVID in the White House,

with the president getting it and then the vice president's chief of staff, although Mike Pence himself has tested negative. You know, today when I was out with Biden, he made this comment that yesterday the White House Science Office put out a statement listing the end of COVID-19 as the top accomplishment of President Trump's first term, which kind of floored me. And frankly, I haven't seen that statement itself. But Mara, is that something you've heard? And is the Trump campaign now trying to project the fact that they have ended the pandemic as a win for them? Well, that's really interesting because the White House press office actually clarified that later and said that, no, it's his goal to end COVID. But there's no doubt that that's been the White House message. The president says that we're

rounding the corner. To him, COVID is in the rearview mirror. He doesn't want people to be consumed by it. He said, don't let it dominate your life. We're learning to live with it. But that is definitely the message. Allison, it seems like one of Biden's main messages around the virus is that the president has no plan. The White House always shoots back by saying Biden's plan is exactly the same thing that we've done. Is that fair? You know what? I don't think any of Biden's advisors or Biden himself would agree with that. I mean, he's got a seven point plan, coronavirus response plan that he's articulated. It actually includes a lot of details.

Big picture. He's calling for, you know, a more unified national approach. He says he will direct the CDC to provide very specific evidence based guidances on when to reopen schools and businesses. So there's not conflicting advice on vaccines. Governors have been asking for help. Biden says he wants to invest $25 billion in a vaccine distribution plan to make sure that every American can get one free of cost when there is a vaccine. Also, several governors have asked the Trump administration to reopen the healthcare.gov marketplaces for a special enrollment period, given that so many Americans have lost their employer-sponsored health care insurance. That has not happened. The Biden

campaign says this would be one of the most immediate steps that Biden would be able to take if he were elected. And do we have any indication that if President Trump were to win re-election, and he has a second term, that he would change much about how he's handled COVID at all today? I don't see any indication that he'd take a different approach. I think what the president was hoping was that vaccines would be online now before the election. He actually promised that many, many times. So I think in the president's mind that the next chapter of the virus, which I think he would think is happening very, very soon after Election Day, is all about vaccinations. You know, I agree with Mara. And I'd say that if he does win re-election,

he's going to have a new set of issues to answer. Right now, governors are asking for help in how to distribute this vaccine. I mean, getting a vaccine to 330 million people is not easy. There are very complex logistics. States need resources. They need freezers to store the vaccine. They need vaccine education. So there's going to be a lot of demands on him. Allison, you were describing this uptick in COVID cases that

we've seen. And I can't help but point out that some of these outbreaks that we are seeing are occurring in key battleground states. And I'm thinking of Michigan, Wisconsin in particular. And, you know, even though COVID cases have been surging in some of these places, our colleagues at Wisconsin Public Radio have reported that there is no mask mandate to vote, meaning you can wait in line without a mask. And so I'm left wondering, and maybe this is sort of hypothesizing, but do you all have a sense of how, if at all, this upsurge might actually affect these last few days of voting? You know, I think election officials have done a whole lot of planning to make voting as safe as possible. But people are going to be concerned if cases are rising in their area. And certainly there's no such thing as zero risk when you go out if the level of community spread is high.

But I will say, you know, back in April, Wisconsin had a primary more than 400,000 people voted, and a peer-reviewed study that was actually published found that this in-person voting in Wisconsin back in April did not produce a detectable surge in coronavirus cases then. So if people are adherent to all of the guidelines in place, it can be done relatively safely. There are also lots of opportunities to vote early, so you can do that. And if you find yourself waiting in line on election day, be patient. There might be lines, so, you know, bring some water, bring a jacket if it's chilly. Don't bring your children or others who aren't voting just to cut down on crowding and be patient. Democracy in action. All right, Allison, we are going to let you go.

Thank you so much, as always, for coming on the show. Sure. Thanks for having me. And when we get back, we'll talk more about the historic levels of turnout we've been seeing. Voting is crucial. And I don't give a damn how you look at it. Is this a man? It was we, the people. The land of the free and the home of the brave.

Not we, the white male citizens. Misrepresentative Democracy. A new series about voting in America from NPR's ThruLine. Listen now. And we're back and we're with our voting reporter, Miles Parks. Hey there, Miles. Hi, Asma. In recognition of our podcast listener, Teal,

at the beginning of the show, we should offer condolences to you because you are a big Tampa Bay fan and Tampa Bay lost in the World Series last night. So my condolences to you. Thank you. You know, I'm a broken man this morning, or this afternoon, I should say,

but hopefully with time, I will heal at some point. That sounds really, really dire. Sports always gives you another chance to win. So Miles, why don't we start by having you walk us through where we are with vote totals right now. Earlier this week, Domenico was telling us that we were at a point where over 60 million people had voted early, which, frankly, is just a wild number to me. I remember last time we talked, you were waiting to see which state actually broke its 2016 total first. I don't know if you have any updates.

Yeah, I do. And basically, I mean, I've basically been refreshing Michael McDonald, the political scientist from University of Florida who has this election tracking database. I've basically been refreshing his page every hour or so. We're up to 74 million people have now cast ballots. And, you know, as states, some states are just ramping up their early voting process this week. We know that in states that have been doing early voting, you know, the last couple of days of early voting, a lot of times are the most popular times. So we're going to see that number keep ticking up. And that's important to note because we're now in a territory, we're up to 54% total of the 2016 turnout, more than half. So we're in kind of unprecedented territory, the first time in the history of modern elections where more votes probably will be cast in this election before

Election Day than actually on Election Day. So, Miles, can you tell from this early vote turnout if we're going to have a historic turnout election? Or are these people who are merely voting early who would have voted later if not for the pandemic? It's hard to say with certainty, but there is nobody I've talked to, I'll say this much, there's nobody I've talked to who is in the election expert space who says that we aren't going to have historic turnout at this point. You know, you can't say it for sure, but everyone seems to think that this is heading that way. You know, Miles, do we know more about who demographically is turning out. And I ask that because, you know, we were swapping messages the other day about this tracking poll I got from Latino Decisions that said roughly a third of Latino voters have already voted. And I feel like that might sound like a lot,

but that statistic by itself in isolation is kind of hard to understand. Yeah, all of these early vote numbers are really hard to take out of, you know, in context. Another number, we know that younger voters seem to be turning out at a higher rate earlier in the early vote than they did in 2016. That's according to the data firm Target Smart. Another trend I'm watching is with new voters. 25% of North Carolina's early voters at this point have been people who either didn't vote in 2016 or weren't registered at the time of the 2016 election. That's according to Professor Michael Bitzer at Catawba College. So young voters and early voters, I think, are at this point the two trends that I'm watching, though it's important to note the big number we just don't know yet is how many people vote on Election Day. You know, you guys talked about it earlier, depending on health, depending on weather, depending on all sorts of other things could, you know, drastically change what that Election Day turnout looks like in a lot of these swing states. So at this point, it's hard to know what these early vote numbers actually mean for the total turnout. So Miles, another issue with voting, you know, particularly as we're seeing so many people vote by mail this year, are these lawsuits that have sprung up, you know,

that question when ballots can be counted. And there was one really key decision that came down from the Supreme Court this week about ballot counting in Wisconsin. And it felt like instantly Democrats started ringing the alarm bells about this case. So what is so important about that particular case? So the bottom line is it moves a key deadline for when Wisconsin voters need to have their absentee ballots to election officials. Previously, voters just needed to have their ballots postmarked by Election Day, but now they'll actually need to be in the hands of election officials by Election Day, which could make a big difference if the margins are close in that state. But the other thing was language injustice Brett

Kavanaugh's concurring opinion. He wrote that deadlines make it so states avoid the chaos and impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after Election Day and potentially, quote, flip the results of an election. The problem there, though, what voting rights activists say and election law professors say is that that's a fundamental kind of misreading of how election administration works. The final vote tallies are never final on election night. It always takes days or weeks for election officials to actually finish tallying the votes. They're getting votes from overseas voters. And then a couple weeks later, they finally certified the results. But what

Kavanaugh is doing here is basically kind of echoing President Trump's claims about the fact that we need to have a final result on election night. But that just isn't really true when you talk to experts. So, Miles, what's the potential consequence of this decision in Wisconsin? Well, it could be huge. I mean, Trump, President Trump won this state by 22,000 votes in 2016. A similar ruling in the primary in April that voters only needed to have their absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day, but they could get to election officials a couple of days later, meant that almost 80,000 more ballots ended up counting. So it's very possible that this decision, if tens of thousands of mail ballots don't end up counting because of it, it's possible

that this could swing that state. All right, we are going to leave it there for now. But if you want to continue the conversation, you can find other fans of this podcast on our Facebook group. It's a place to talk about the pod and politics in a civil way. Just head to n.pr slash politics group to request to join. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Myles Parks.

I cover voting. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And as always, thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.