While Montana was an example of how voter turnout will increase in states where voters have become used to voting from home, the experience in Midwestern and Eastern states that have not embraced voting from home until the pandemic was rockier was a different story -- and not just because of the pandemic's social distancing requirements or police presence due to widespread protests.
In Pennsylvania's largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in Washington, D.C., in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Indianapolis, Indiana, election officials underestimated the number of people who sought to vote in person for any number of reasons: from not getting a mail-in ballot; to getting a ballot late and wanting to drop it off; to simply wanting to vote in a polling place.
While Pennsylvania's top officials reported a "smooth election amid historic circumstances" as 1.8 million residents applied for an absentee ballot, "17 times greater than the number who applied" in its 2016 presidential primary, voting rights advocates manning election-protection hotlines observed a different experience. The Lawyers' Committee said that 55 percent of the calls received on June 2 were from Pennsylvania -- and from people unable to vote by mail.
Half of the hotline calls concerned finding a polling place, the Committee's Lacy Crawford said. Another 17 percent concerned ballots -- meaning unfamiliarity with mailed-out ballots versus polling place voting. Another 13 percent concerned voter registration. Of slightly less than half of the callers who reported their race, 63 percent were Black, 21 percent were white and 12 percent were Latino.
The takeaway from the committee briefings, where its partners summarized what they were hearing from hundreds of observers, underscored that accommodating the fall's voters will mean planning for high levels of voting from home -- but still significant in-person voting at precincts. That conclusion is what emerges after hearing detailed reports of snafus.
"The big theme of the day is confusion," said Ivan Garcia, civic engagement director for MakeTheRoadPA.org. "Voters are turning up to their old polling place and not always finding directions to the consolidated poll place that they should be going to. Because of the large number of voters at each poll, poll workers are having trouble finding voters in the poll books -- if they even have the poll books. In the worst situations, they are being turned down and turned away so that they cannot vote."
Garcia also said that many voters had not received a mail-in ballot -- even though they said they had applied. When they turned up at vote centers, some poll workers were unfamiliar with the procedures to let them vote. (In some states, poll workers can look up that voter in an electronic poll book and cancel their mail-in ballot, allowing them to vote with a regular ballot. In other states, they must fill out a form to get a provisional ballot.)
"We are seeing voters who requested mail-in ballots who never received them," he said. "They are turning out to their polling place to vote. And instead of voting provisionally, which is what is supposed to happen, they are being turned away as well. There have been lots of phone calls asking about the clarification about the deadlines for returning mail ballots based on the executive order that Gov. [Tom] Wolf signed yesterday [June 1]. The length of the lines is increasing as we get to the end of the day. There's been problems in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia."
In Indianapolis, election officials also underestimated the number of in-person voters.
"One thing we learned from our colleagues in Indiana is that even in these challenging circumstances in the Midwest and nationally, voters have really shown a quiet resolve to persevere and to exercise their right to vote today," said Ami Gandhi, with the committee's Chicago chapter, which was assisted by Common Cause in Indiana. "The majority of calls we received so far are people needing clarification on where their polling place is... Some voters, especially in Indianapolis, have been facing long lines and congestion..." We're also getting many questions about absentee ballots by voters not comfortable with voting in person."
These comments reflect that some voters, in response to the pandemic, clearly want to vote from home -- one trend that is likely to continue into the fall's general election. Yet, at the same time, the comments also reflect that many voters who did not get an absentee ballot, for any number of reasons, still wanted to find a way to vote in person. (This was apart from police in some locations, namely Washington, telling voters to leave because of a pending curfew.)
More TakeawaysThe June 2 experience had other lessons. In Pennsylvania, where state law does not allow local election officials to start processing mail-in ballots before Election Day and the governor's order will allow ballots postmarked by June 2 to arrive up to a week later and still be counted, the official results in some contests will not be known for days -- which will recur this fall. It's not known whether the state's legislature will act to allow counting to start earlier in the fall.
There were other lessons. In Baltimore, where a contractor for the city delivered paper ballots to one district that were not properly printed, that caused a series of cascading problems that will take days to unwind -- from voters casting ballots that will not count, to reconciling votes and declaring official outcomes in city races.
That printing error is a warning sign for states or counties that anticipate printing unprecedented volumes of paper ballots in the fall. However, because Maryland is a state offering same-day voter registration, most issues affecting voters could be solved on Election Day at in-person voting sites.
In Washington, one reaction to not getting ballots into voters' hands was to email voters the ballot -- to be printed at their home and then submitted. That response was quickly criticized by cybersecurity advocates, saying it offered a hacking pathway (even though some states have been sending ballots this way to soldiers stationed overseas).
In Philadelphia, there were also reports that the city was ignoring social distancing standards by cramming their new voting machines (one per jurisdiction) into multi-precinct voting locations, which forced voters and poll workers to stand on top of each other. There also were reports from other counties that election officials did not put ballot drop boxes in visible locations.
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