Today, Explained - Everything that could go wrong with the November election

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

A worsening pandemic. A poll worker shortage. A hobbled postal service. Russian hacking. Donald Trump. Vox’s Ella Nilsen explains the many obstacles facing the United States as Election Day nears. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Hey there, it's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for a minute. It's August. Welcome to August, y'all. We're marking the passage of time here in the District of Columbia with a tropical storm. How about you? How do you mark the passage of time? Another way to do it is to calculate how close the election is. And it's getting much closer. As of today, it's just 90 days away. But with all the mail-in voting that needs to happen, this thing's actually going to kick off much sooner than that. A presidential election during a worsening pandemic is, of course, no small undertaking. So today, we're going to break down what it will take to get the United States ready. But before we can even get out the gate,

the president is, of course, making this harder. Mail-in voting ballots. You're asking for fraud. People steal them out of mailboxes. People print them, and then they sign them, and they give them in. And the people don't even know where they're double counted. And they're in all the mailboxes. And kids go and they raid the mailboxes, and they hand them to people that are signing the ballots down the end of the street, which is happening. They grab the ballots.

You don't think that happens? But voting is a great honor. It's a great honor. And people love to go out and vote. And I want to keep it that way. On top of constantly casting doubt on mail-in voting, President Trump is also floating the idea of delaying the election altogether. Ellen Nilsson, you cover politics at Vox. Can he even do that? So no, President Trump does not have the authority to cancel or delay the election. Congress actually has more authority in this matter, as well as individual states,

when it comes to determining when the election can actually be held. He can influence federal funding for states to try to shore up their elections and get them ready before November. Before November, he has purview over the U.S. Postal Service, which will be responsible for delivering millions of absentee ballots ahead of the general election. So, you know, Trump has plenty of influence here, but he cannot delay or cancel the election outright. And how did his party and the other one react when he tried to do this last week or floated the idea? Actually, Republicans in a rare moment spoke out against the president. Never in the history of the country through wars, depressions and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time. And we'll find a way to do that again this November 3rd. All right, so the election's probably going to be held on November 3rd. How's it looking? Is the country ready to do this? So the summer primaries

have painted a fairly worrisome picture. Voters stood in line for hours for the June 23rd primary and an overwhelming number mailed in absentee ballots. But it wasn't until Monday that the Board of Elections counted the last vote, as in five weeks after the election. Many states are not prepared for a general election, and that's because states essentially have to hold two elections on November 3rd. They have to do both, you know, a safe in-person election that gives voters who want to the option to go cast their ballot in person and, you know, hopefully not get coronavirus when they do it. And then also they're giving more people the option to cast their ballot through the mail, through absentee voting, where people just fill out their ballot and send it back in the mail.

Okay, so the country's got to have basically two massive elections on November 3rd or in advance of that date, the one in-person one and the one that's all done by mail. Let's start with the in-person voting. How are states preparing that? And are all 50 states and 50 different places on preparations? The biggest thing with in-person elections is poll workers. And the thing is, is that typically poll workers tend to be older. They tend to be people who are retired, who like to volunteer their time. And these are also the same people that are the most vulnerable to coronavirus. So many of these poll workers who used to show up at the polls and, you know, stay there all day on November 3rd are afraid to do that because they're afraid that it will make them more likely to get coronavirus.

And that basically means when you have fewer poll workers, you have fewer available polling places. We saw that right off the bat with Wisconsin, which was one of the first states to hold their primary in person after coronavirus really got serious. Hundreds of voters wrapped around the football field all the way up to the school entrance. Maybe about two hours because I had to make a circle around two times and then come back. The unprecedented lines are a product of a poll worker shortage. Only five voting centers are open today in Milwaukee, way down from the usual 180 sites. So in order to try to attract, you know, younger poll workers or basically anybody who is healthy

and able-bodied and willing to go staff a polling place, a lot of states are trying to figure out how to pay people for their time. You know, because the economy is not really good right now. If you're trying to attract young people, you kind of have to make it worth their while. Anybody who's able to, we're asking you to step up in this time of need during coronavirus. Democracy, the foundation of our whole form of government, is voting at a precinct on election day. And that's why we need the poll workers. One of the big takeaways from some states is basically to hold elections in much larger polling places. So we saw this in states like

Kentucky, which basically had thousands of voters go through, you know, like sports arenas rather than, you know, a school gym. And essentially, you know, they can space a lot more people out, but still kind of get people through and not have these massive lines around the block. Of course, the other way to avoid the massive lines is to vote early and to vote by mail. And the president's been tweeting about all these worries about fraudulent voting if people do vote by mail, but we've already debunked that on the show. How is the country preparing for vote by mail and what are the biggest issues facing the country? States have to kind of ramp up their own capacity for vote by mail. And this is like things that are as simple as like contracting out to third party contractors

who literally are the ones who print the ballots and, you know, print the instructions for how to vote by mail. They have to get those bids out early. They have to, in some cases, buy equipment to count the ballots because, you know, one expert told me, you know, it could take something like 500 people all day to open a million ballots. So, you know, some cases, some states just need to get machines to do that more efficiently. And of course, before they even get counted, they got to make it through the USPS, which, as we've covered on the show, is having some issues. There's a lot going on with the Postal Service right now. But the biggest thing is that they have a new postmaster general, a guy named Louis DeJoy, who was a former Trump donor.

And the new postmaster is trying to do something that Republicans have long dreamed of, which is essentially cutting costs at the U.S. Postal Service. And the way that DeJoy is trying to do that is to change delivery times and processing times at the USPS. What's he changed? Before DeJoy came in and made these changes, basically the day's mail would all get processed in one day, even if that meant postal workers working overtime and processing, you know, even beyond the end of their shifts. It was the goal of the USPS to get all of that mail processed and out and delivered, you know, in the day and not have this backlog. When DeJoy came in, he basically said, when your shift ends, you go home and you don't stay overtime. You don't process the day's mail until it is completely done. You just leave it and you come back in the morning and then you pick up where you left off, essentially. And what's been the upshot of that change? The upshot is just a backlog. And it's a backlog that is getting worse. And it's also really

worrisome as far as ballots are concerned, because essentially, you know, each state tells you, you need to get your ballot postmarked in by this date. But now elections experts are saying get your ballot in at least a week before your state tells you to and even give it more time if you're able to. Get it in, you know, two weeks or three weeks before. Give state officials enough time to get all these ballots and be able to process them. Because if you do everything right and you get your ballot in by the deadline or get it postmarked by the deadline, the processing delays at the USPS are now bad enough that it could still just get stuck in the system and not get to your state or local elections officials by the time they need to get it. And if it doesn't

get there on time, it could be discounted and your vote will just not get counted. Okay, so apart from having a president who's floating the idea of delaying the election altogether, we've got a global pandemic affecting people's willingness to volunteer at polling stations, to show up to polling stations. We've got a whole country grappling with adapting to vote-by-mail absentee ballots. And then at the USPS, which will process those ballots, we've got intentional slowdowns from a Trump donor who's been put in charge of everything. Yes. And the other worrisome thing behind all of this is just the lack of money from Congress at this point. So Congress right now is deliberating

on another coronavirus package, but states and cities and towns desperately need additional federal aid and state elections officials desperately need additional federal aid, and state elections officials desperately need additional federal aid. They got some in the CARES package back in March, but many of those states have essentially used up that funding on their primaries, which many held over the summer. And they're staring down a potentially much bigger election with greater turnout in November, and they are running out of time and they're running out of money.

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gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 2020, 2020, 2020. Ella, what's this actually going to look like on November 3rd? Will so much of the country have already voted? Will we have results that night? Is this going to take weeks? Hopefully the Supreme Court doesn't have to step in.

I mean, I have absolutely no idea what to expect on November 3rd, but I think that we should all, especially we in the media, prepare ourselves for the scenario that we should all, especially we in the media, prepare ourselves for the scenario that we very well may not know who won the night of. And we might not know in the coming days. It could take a week. It could take two weeks to make sure that we get all of the absentee votes counted and verified before they can actually declare a winner. You know, so many years I've been watching elections and they say the projected winner or the winner of the election, I don't want to see that take place in a week after November 3rd or a month

or, frankly, with litigation and everything else that can happen, years, years, or you never even know who won the election. And considering his track record, we can expect that the president might not help the process of encouraging the nation to be patient with the results. What's the worst case scenario here? So the worst case scenario is an election that is too close to call. Basically, you know, if either Trump or Biden wins in a blowout and, you know, it is decisive and we know who the winner is, that takes a lot of the uncertainty out. But if we have a situation where it's like the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore, where we really don't know, there's a lot of uncertainty about who just won the election because some states are too

close to call, you know, important states like Florida or Pennsylvania, then that gives both sides an opening to try to, you know, say that they won. And that is what election experts say is really the disaster scenario. Because what happens? The fight for the presidency becomes much bigger than a fight between two guys. It's like the whole country is going to be at each other's necks or what? And it also gives people an opening to argue that the electoral process itself wasn't legitimate and the outcome is not legitimate. And if people, especially in our hyper-polarized country, fundamentally cannot accept that an election outcome is legitimate and that that leads to perhaps not a peaceful

transfer of power or things that are sort of the hallmark of American democracy, that is where you really have a crisis of democracy on your hands, essentially. And in that case, it might, what, once again lead to the Supreme Court having to step in? That is a possible scenario. But election experts are also just concerned that, you know, whoever the loser is fundamentally does not accept that they lost and their supporters never accept that they lost. And that just has really concerning implications for, you know, belief in the democratic process as well. Okay. So to avoid that, we have to hope for a blowout. Yes.

We haven't talked about hacking. Is that going to be a major concern here too? I mean, we're coming off the 2016 election. How much have we secured ourselves from, say, Russian interference? I mean, that is definitely still a concern. I feel like now it is a concern that has kind of fallen a bit to the wayside because all of these other concerns are so much more immediate and just sort of like right in our faces. But one expert that I talked to, Nate Persily from Stanford, recently wrote, it is a sign of our through-the-looking-glass times that I can now be nostalgic for the moment when all we needed to fear was foreign takeover of the U.S. electoral system or widespread voter-targeted disinformation. And that's, like, kind of a shocking statement. Those fears are definitely still there. Congress has not passed any significant funding to really secure the U.S. election system from hacking or targeting by foreign operatives.

But right now, the most pressing concerns are literally just can states hold this election safely and can we just get this done? And what's the answer? I mean, we're sitting here in early August talking about all of these issues that we can see coming. Are states taking this seriously? Is Congress taking this seriously? States are definitely taking it seriously, and they're trying to gear up as much as they possibly can. But I think if you talk to state election officials, they say that they really do need more help from Congress. And the other big piece of this, I think, is just public education. People are starting to hear about the

problems with the post office and delivery times, but it's really, really important that people know that they can't just put their ballot in the mail on November 3rd. They need to put it in at the end of October, potentially even. What do you think, Ella? Will we get it together on November 3rd. They need to put it in at the end of October, potentially even. What do you think, Ella? Will we get it together by November 3rd? I have no idea. But I do think that people are kind of becoming aware of problems with delays and sort of starting to change how they are planning to vote accordingly. You know, we're in August right now and we still have, oh my God, just like three months.

We still have around three months to prepare. So people do have time. It's not like we're recording this the week before the election. I think that, you know, education is a really important piece. And the sooner that people get educated about what they need to do as citizens in order to get their vote in on time, the better. Well, Ella, we'll have you back on soon to talk about the latest. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much.