A Voting Rights Roundup with Stephen Wolf

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

Welcome to Another Way, the podcast produced by Equal Citizens, a nonpartisan pro democracy organization founded by Lawrence Lessig. This is Adam Mikam, the organization's campaigns manager. Before we begin the episode, please consider supporting us on Patreon. With your support, we can keep this podcast going. To sign up, go to patreon.com/citizens that's P A T R E o-n.com/citizens now to the episode. If you've been listening to this podcast

or have been following us on social

media, you know by now that we are extremely concerned about the effect that COVID 19 will have on our elections. As each day passes, it becomes ever more clear that our democracy is ill equipped to weather this crisis. Drastic changes are needed, and fast. Fortunately, many states are now acting, taking steps to shore up their elections. Indeed, election laws are changing so quickly it's hard to keep track of them, even for those of us who do this professionally. And on top of this, Congress recently allocated $400 million for election purposes. To dig into and make sense of recent actions by Congress and states across the country, I spoke to Stephen Wolf. Stephen is an elections writer for the political news site the Daily coast and is a national recognized expert on redistricting.

Each week he publishes the Voting Rights

Roundup, a free newsletter that covers important developments around the country regarding voting rights, redistricting, democracy reform, and election law changes. A link to the Roundup is provided in the show Notes.

Steven's work on redistricting has also been

widely cited, including by the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox, and the Brennan center for Justice. I know I have a habit of heaping praise upon my guests, but Stephen is truly an invaluable source for election law related news. Throughout this episode, Stephen and I speak in depth about why the federal stimulus fell short of what was needed, which states are doing a good job preparing for upcoming elections and which are not what we should expect in terms of ballot initiatives in November, how our political institutions are shaping the government's response to this crisis, and much, much more. A few notes before we begin. First, because election laws are changing so rapidly, some information may already be out of date by the time this goes live. And second, the audio of this episode is less than ideal. Obviously I'm not in my normal recording studio and had some technical difficulties while recording this starting about 10 minutes in, so I appreciate you understanding that. With that, let's turn to the interview and I hope you enjoy.

So Stephen, let's start with some recent News. Congress just passed a major stimulus package. It included $400 million for election purposes. You've been pretty critical of it, though. Can you explain why? What were you hoping for that wasn't included?

Sure.

There are two important issues with regard to the congressional stimulus. First, while it did allocate 400 million, that was about one fifth of the amount that the nonpartisan Brennan center had recommended as the. As the minimum of what was needed to ensure that elections can still be run. They recommended $2 billion. And then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's proposal had $4 billion. And so that's a. That's a pretty large difference in terms of the funding provided. And it's important that the federal government take up much of the burden of funding this because they can run budget deficits in a way that the states can't. Now, the second major issue is that the congressional stimulus only provided funding for, but didn't require that states take any particular measures to ensure people can vote. The Brennan center and Pelosi's proposals had included mandates that states make it so that voters could cast an absentee ballot without needing any excuse, so that voters could register on Election Day itself or register online. About one sixth of the country still can't even register online in the year 2020. And then finally, they had a provision that would have switched to a predominantly vote by mail system in cases of emergencies like the current pandemic. So when you look at that proposal versus what Congress actually passed, there's not much impetus for states to adopt these reforms if their leaders in their states don't want to adopt them.

Right. And we've talked about it before on this podcast, that the difference between just allocating grants versus actually mandating on a federal level, best practices, because as we've seen for the past decade, more than the past decade actually, for really the history of the Republic, some states just will not engage in best practices to ensure the most voters can vote. And so, Stephen, as you were advocating, and as many people were advocating, you know, some sort of federal mandate to ensure that these states would implement these laws. Absolutely critical. But in terms of, you know, how you're perceiving this, 400 million is at least a start. It gives states some flexibility to make laws. The states that are at least, you know, looking or wanting to make those changes. This is a small step towards that end.

Yes, I mean, it's, of course not nothing.

I mean, even one fifth of the

needed funding is still 1/5. The big problem having that little amount of funding is that it's $400 million. And let's say we tried to mail a ballot to every registered voter in the country that could end up being 200 million registered voters, leaving only a couple dollars per voter. And you can quickly see how those funds are going to run out soon. Now, not every state's going to take those, those funds and use them productively. So perhaps the states that are engaging in a good faith effort to encourage voting access, we'll be able to make a lot of use of those funds.

Right.

And so can you talk a little bit about the bill that Pelosi had introduced? Because I think this was an important moment that, you know, the House Democrats did decide to really listen to the voting rights community. And, you know, their starting point in negotiations was over the amount that the Brennan center had proposed to make sure, at minimum, we could run our election smoothly. So can you just talk a little bit about the Pelosi bill? I know you alluded to it a bit and, you know, do you have faith that the House will, in future negotiations, continue to push democracy reform as part of overall negotiations?

So with the Pelosi bill, it had a couple of key components, and what it tried to do to expand voting access was to make it a lot easier to vote by mail and encourage voting by mail. And then alongside that, it tried to make it a lot easier to register to vote, particularly registering online, so that you wouldn't have to go out and do it in person. Amid the pandemic with the voting by mail provisions, over a dozen states still require an excuse to cast an absentee ballot. And even some states that don't require excuses, they require you get witnesses to sign the ballot envelope or even a notary notarizing the ballot. And that, of course, is very inconvenient amid the current crisis. And so this bill would have waved away those restrictions, at least for federal elections, and let anyone who wanted to vote an absentee mail ballot. And it had certain rules that if a state of emergency were declared within a certain timeframe, it would trigger sending a ballot to every registered voter as the default voting method, which five states already do. And on the voter registration front, it would have directed every state to allow online registration and, and same day registration where you can register on election Day itself. And that would be a big change for many states. For instance, the maximum deadline that federal law allows currently is 30 days, is making voters register 30 days before an election, which is before some are even paying attention to the process. Now, aside from the mandates, that bill directed states to comply with it did give them $4 billion in funding, which was twice the Brennan Center's recommendation, and hopefully would have been fully adequate for enacting these reforms, at least to the best of the ability of state election officials. Now, I do have one piece of criticism for the Democratic proposal, and that was around the politics of passing it. Pelosi's proposal would have made these changes permanent. And Republicans have long opposed these measures. And if the goal was to get them to agree to allow these measures to pass as part of the current stimulus package, I think Democrats would have had better chances of succeeding had they made these proposals. Emergency measures that only applied in a national crisis like we're seeing this year. And that was a recommendation of several voting experts. And hopefully, if Democrats are serious about making this a kind of red line demand for any future stimulus package, they will consider taking steps like making these temporary measures to get Republicans on board at least for this election.

Right.

And do you have optimism that the Democrats will continue to fight for this in future negotiations?

I would hope so. I mean, there it seems like there are going to be future large stimulus bills like it doesn't seem like $2 trillion is going to be enough. And Democrats realize that because these are essentially must pass bills in terms of Republicans electoral prospects in November, they do hold leverage over ensuring certain provisions make it into the bill. That said, you know, it's unclear whether Democrats will have the stomach to fight for election procedures that aren't directly tied to economic relief for people who are out of work or who are dealing with a sick loved one or something like that. But on the other hand, you know, Democrats need to realize that if they don't push for this bill and we can't hold elections where millions of people are unable to vote, that could result in a political crisis that could send the economy back into a tailspin on its own. And so these are sort of secondary economic relief measures in the more medium term than what the stimulus package that was passed last week implemented.

Right. And as you have noted quite often online and in your writing, is that elections have to continue, and they've continued through many national crises in the past. And so the question is not if we postpone our democracy, it's how, how best we adapt to the situation and make sure our laws can maximize participation

instead of allowing the democracy to continue

in a very limited fashion, which, as you say, would be a disaster both, you know, for political stability, for the economy and for civic life. So now the federal government has really not taken this super seriously I mean, again, as you said, we got $400 million, but not enough. So what's new? The onus is now on the states in many respects to try and adapt as best as possible without real bold action from the federal government. And indeed, as you have chronicled a lot recently, states are moving fairly quickly to adjust to this new reality. Before we get into election law changes, the question has to be asked, Stephen, what do we do about the primaries? So how many states have thus far postponed their primaries? And I should say that we're recording this, and by the time this comes out, more can change. So this is just kind of a starting place. But how many states have postponed their primaries? And is this the right thing to do, in your view? Should we be postponing primaries?

Well, in just the last two weeks, we've seen kind of an avalanche of states enacting electoral law changes in. And the most visible one of that has been postponing primaries. I think something like at least a dozen or maybe even 15 states have done that in just the last few weeks. And what these states are doing is largely postponing them to May or June. So they're not postponing them that long. And they're hoping that doing so will give them enough time to implement changes like expanding mail voting and other other ways to vote outside of Election Day, something that, you know, states couldn't just flip a switch and do in a matter of a week or two. You know, these things take time, planning, and effort. Even if it's designed flawlessly, it'll take a lot of skill to implement these policies in a way that doesn't hurt certain voters, even though it's intended to help.

Right.

And as in a previous episode, my colleague Jason Harrow and I interviewed Rick Hassan, law professor, and, you know, that was his big takeaway, was that this is going to take time, that you have to start planning now, even though you, you know, the elect, you know, a lot of these elections might not be for a while. I mean, in the case of the primary, it's a different story. But these, you know, making big election law changes, it takes time to implement and to administer. I mean, these are real, you know, heavy lifts to, especially in states that don't have a lot of voters using absentee ballots, which we'll talk about in a second. So. But overall, just the kind of. The summary here, Stephen, is that you do support postponing these primaries if it means that states are adjusting to this new reality and ensuring that by postponing it, they will increase the likelihood that more voters will participate.

Yes.

I mean, I agree that states should consider strongly postponing their primaries at least a few weeks or months specifically to implement policies like expanded mail voting and online registration, if they can. That being said, though, I mean, the whole precedent of postponing elections could be very dangerous if it's not done in a good faith manner or one that is intended solely to ensure that voters can safely vote. Fortunately, though, you know, states don't have any control over the time of the November general election that is set by Congress under the authority of the Constitution. And the Constitution contains the date by which the President and Congress's terms will expire. So there's almost very little question of whether we'll hold elections in November. It's mostly a matter of who will be able to vote.

Right, Right. And that's the key baseline. That's a good principle off of which to judge the decisions to postpone. And I should say, Stephen, that I believe Arkansas is the only state to not postpone runoff elections happening at the time we record this podcast in a couple days. And I believe you said that it is the only state to conduct primary elections in the month of March or set to, meaning moving forward.

Yes.

So over the last two weeks, Ohio kind of kicked off of a trend right before their primary. They decided to postpone it. And then after that, several states immediately followed suit, many of them with late March or April primaries that are now almost all in June. And Arkansas was in a unfortunate position where they weren't really able to postpone their primary, but they were able to remove the excuse requirement to cast an absentee ballot. So hopefully that system will help protect voters when they go to vote on Tuesday.

Right.

And so what are you looking for? I mean, you know, before we get into the specifics of what's being done, generally speaking, Stephen, we. What kind of policies are you looking for for that when a state holds a primary or general election? I mean, let's, let's talk general election right now because the primaries are maybe a little too close to enact kind of broader changes. But what are, in an ideal situation, what are the policies you're looking for states to implement, if they don't have it already, to ensure that elections can run smoothly with maximum participation in November.

So ideally, every state would be following the lead of the five states that are mostly in the west, that vote almost entirely by mail, and those states will send a mail ballot to every registered voter. But that's not the only method for voting, and that is Also a key point, it's more of an all of the above solution than a one size fits all. Now, in these states, over 90% of voters tend to vote by mail, but they also have in person polling places, especially for people with disabilities who might not be able to cast a mail ballot, or for people who live in places where postal service is not that reliable and voting by mail would actually be more burdensome than voting in person. So alongside with mail voting, there are also a host of related policies to make sure mail voting goes smoothly. For instance, prepaying the cost of postage on the return envelope saves voters a trip to the post office. It makes it a lot more easy or a lot more convenient to cast a vote by mail. There are other provisions, though. You know, in states that still require an excuse to vote absentee, simply removing that requirement and letting anyone request an absentee ballot makes it a lot easier to vote by mail. Aside from voting by mail, though, states still need to have other provisions for how people can vote, such as in person, early voting of perhaps a couple weeks before election Day, having ample hours to vote during election Day. And they'll still need to have people staffing their polling places on election Day. And that's another big problem with the pandemic going on, because most poll workers are over the age of 60 and about a quarter are even over the age of 70. And people of that age demographic are at heightened risk of contracting coronavirus and having serious complications from it. So some states have begun encouraging younger people to volunteer as poll workers, particularly college students who are no longer in classes or other government employees who are no longer performing their regular duties and are free to have worked the polls.

Right. And of course, there, these are just kind of. But a couple examples of some key policies that have to be implemented. All right, Stephen, so you've been tracking what's happening on the state level and just published a voting rights roundup summarizing your findings. How do you stay on top of all this election law changes? And can you give us some highlights about what's going on in terms of what states are doing to make voting easier during these difficult times?

Yeah, so I work with my colleagues on the Daily Coast Elections Team, and we are tracking things like changes to election dates, changes to election procedures, provisions to ensure people can vote in accessible manners amid the pandemic. And so we've been seeing over a dozen states have postponed their primaries. States that had had primaries in March or April pushed them off mostly to May and June. Other states have loosened their rules around who can vote by an absentee mail ballot. Some states have even considered sending either absentee ballot request forms or even ballots themselves to all registered voters. And then some other states have looked at canceling in person voting, which while it's necessary to reduce in person voting to minimize the potential exposure to the virus, eliminating it entirely could present problems for certain voters who can't easily vote by mail. And it could even violate federal law. So we're tracking all sorts of changes. And, you know, these things are happening day by day. Things are changing very quickly.

Right.

And there are some interesting, you know, things going on in terms of states that you wouldn't necessarily think of as, you know, pro voting rights states. You know, I'm thinking, for example, you wrote about Nebraska and West Virginia mailing every voter an absentee ballot request. I don't remember, Stephen, if the postage is included in those particular ones. But that is a positive step forward. Mailing voters their absentee ballot requests, I mean, I think with postage is obviously better, is a good start. I mean, ideally, as you said earlier, you know, moving to maybe a vote by vote at home system like in the five states that have it currently, and that in a previous episode, I spoke with Phil Keesling of Vote at Home about. But in terms of proactive steps, mailing everyone an absentee ballot request is positive.

Yes. I mean, even if they're not ideal, these steps are still better than the previous status quo was. I mean, in Indiana, for instance, you had to have an excuse to cast an absentee ballot. And they also had other restrictive voting rules. And yet you had members of both parties, including the Republican governor, say, hey, we got to ease these absentee rules. And they took executive action to waive the requirement that anyone present an excuse for the upcoming primary. So we've seen this happening with members of both parties at the state level, even though congressional Republicans have kind of been much more resistant to passing these changes.

Right. And again, I think of, you know, Idaho you wrote about, which is now allowing people to request an absentee ballot online, which is actually a really good thing to do. Stephen, something that you did recently was create a map of all the states that have that still have excuse requirements to get an absentee ballot. And your map has kind of been circulating in a bunch of different articles and across Twitter. Can you talk a little bit about which states still require excuses to request an absentee ballot? If there's any sort of trend? I mean, are these red states or these blue states? And do you have hope that these states are going to actually take action to make it easier to vote by mail.

Yeah. So when you look at which states make it easier to vote by mail or harder, there are some partisan differences, but there are a lot of regional differences in the country. In the west, you have all five of the states that vote almost entirely by mail, and nearly every other state doesn't require an excuse to vote absentee. The states that still require excuses are predominantly in the south, but also a little bit in the Northeast and in New England and in the northeastern states, especially the ones where Democrats have full control of government, they've actually tried to take steps in the last couple of years to remove these excuse requirements, but they've run into the problem where they have to amend their state constitutions to do so. And that is a multi year process. So the workaround, at least for the short term, has been to see if states can use executive actions to waive the requirement in effect, by saying you can cite the mere concern about the virus to qualify as a valid voter for an excuse to vote absentee. And so we've seen states in both the south and the Northeast, you know, both Republican states and Democratic states have started taking steps to make it easier to vote absentee.

Right. And that's obviously a really positive step. I mean, I know that I've been in communication with folks in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire where there really is an effort to push lawmakers or the secretary of state or the governor, whoever has the, the authority to either expand the definition of an excuse or, you know, continue the effort towards a potential constitutional amendment in the case of Massachusetts or New York to just move straight up to no excuse absentee ballots. And I think that, you know, you will see more pressure, especially in a place like New Hampshire where a no excuse absentee ballot law passed both houses and the governor vetoed it in 2019. It's going to be much harder for the governor to veto it in 2020. In the midst of this pandemic, of course, it's still possible. Sununu vetoed a redistricting bill late last year as well. So anything's possible. But there's certainly a little bit more timeliness to ensuring that everyone has the option at least to vote by mail. Can we talk a little bit more, Stephen, about though the states like Ohio and North Dakota, I believe that are. I think Ohio is maybe doing it on a more blanket level, but moving to only vote by mail? You talked about it a little bit. I think Alaska might be doing it as well, where people can Only vote by mail and there's no in person voting. Why is that so problematic?

Yeah, so in Ohio, what they have done is transition to a system where they largely canceled in person voting and they're only opening in person polling places for people with certain disabilities or people who have other special needs that they can't easily vote by mail. And that's kind of the bare minimum of what we need. You know, vote by mail is great for a lot of people, but, you know, if you're visually impaired or have limited mobility, or if you don't live in a place that has great access to the postal service, mail voting is actually more difficult for you than voting in person might be. So if states think they can get away with not having any in person polling places, that's probably going to be a violation of federal disability laws, other voting laws at the federal level. So states that have largely transitioned to vote by mail, they still have a certain amount of in person polling places available and other voting methods, you know, voting machines that can accommodate people with disabilities and that sort of thing. And that is absolutely necessary to ensure that voting by mail doesn't leave people behind because it is intentioned to be a voting access reform that makes it easier to vote. And just because there are some people who that's not true for shouldn't mean that those people shouldn't be able to easily vote too.

Right.

And there's another thing that we really have to be extremely cautious about, Stephen, is signature matching. Are you worried about that? Can you explain what that is? And can you give context from 2018 about why signature matching laws, when it comes to vote by mail, absentee balloting can take a good reform and make it really regressive and disenfranchise a lot of voters.

Yeah. So in some states, I'll take the worst example, for instance, one of those was Georgia in 2018, where they didn't have any statewide standards for how to compare signatures that a voter put on the ballot on the envelope containing their absentee ballot with the one that was on file when they registered to vote. And, and instead they were relying on largely volunteer election workers who weren't trained in signature analysis to compare these two signatures. And in the worst case, a state might reject a voter's signature as invalid and not even notify them that their absentee ballot had been rejected. On the other hand, you have states that take more proactive steps to ensure voters are not disenfranchised. And if these states suspect that a signature does not match between a voter's ballot envelope and the one on file, they might have a requirement that election officials contact that voter and give them several days to verify their identity and that it was their ballot ensuring that the ballot will be counted as it was supposed to be.

And this played a real big role in 2018 in the Georgia elections and in Florida.

Right? Yeah. So in Georgia, because you lacked a statewide standard for how to determine when ballots signatures were valid or not, you had some counties rejecting, you know, several percentage of absentee ballots up to like 7 or 8% of votes cast by absentee ballot, whereas other counties were rejecting hardly any at all. And so it ended up discriminating against certain voters based on where they lived because there was no statewide standard. Now, fortunately, there was a lawsuit that the state settled where they agreed to have a statewide standard and they agreed to start notifying voters and giving them a chance to correct any problems on their signature. But not every state has taken those steps yet.

Right.

So one thing I haven't heard many people talk about, apropos coronavirus, is voter registration. We rely so heavily on third party groups and government agencies to register people to vote. You know, it's a real question about how voters will get registered during this pandemic. And to put it into perspective for our listeners, I just read an article on NBC that said the Department of Motor Vehicle Polls is the source of about 45% of all voter applications nationwide. But of course, in many parts of the country, these agencies, the DMV is limited to, you know, fewer hours or might not be open at all. And so are other places where registration forms are typically, you know, available, like libraries, high schools, government offices that aren't the dmv. So, Stephen, I'm wondering what you're thinking about in terms of registration. And one thing I'll pose to you in that same article, there was a proposal that really intrigued me, and it was calling for states to mail mass registration forms with addressed and stamped returns to eligible but unregistered voters. You know, that's very similar to giving a blanket absentee request form to all registered voters. But I guess this would be to have the state agencies mail registration forms to everyone who is currently not registered. What are your thoughts on that and are there any other policies that you think would be worth considering to make sure that there isn't a decline in new registrants?

Yeah. So unfortunately, this election is going to put a lot of the onus for voter registration on the voters themselves. And historically, registration has been one of the biggest barriers to voter Participation with states that make it very easy, having turnout that far exceeds states that make it very difficult to register. So I really like the idea of having the state try to mail a voter registration form to every eligible but unregistered voter, or even to voters who are registered and need to update their registration. That's not going to be nearly enough and must be enacted in concert with other policies, specifically having online voter registration. Currently, 10 states with about one sixth of the country's population really allow online voter registration. And then even the states that do largely limit the state to voters who have a driver's license ID with their state or some, or have used some other government service. So in states like New York, where a lot of people don't drive, it's going to be much more difficult for voters to register online. And states need to be taking that into account and seeing if they can provide other avenues for people to register online, such as people who use the government's public health department or something like that. And then the final policy with voter registration is same day voter registration, where voters can register on election day itself or during the early voting period when they show up to vote in person. And many states still don't allow that to happen.

Right, and that's going to be so critical because we can talk about how registered voters are able to cast a ballot, but, you know, we still haven't gotten the narrative about, well, what do we do about those who aren't registered into the news. And so hopefully that continues because that is something that is absolutely keeping me up at night in terms of the continued health of our democracy. But another major concern, Stephen, is voter ID requirements. Because voter ID requirements, you and I know, our listeners know, are extremely burdensome in many, many states and keep voters who may not have access to those IDs, you know, may have lost certain documents and not be able to afford the cost of getting a new replacement or a replacement document, whatever the case may be. We know that these laws can disenfranchise people, but especially now, because when you don't have easy access to the DMV or other places where you can get the necessary requirements, you really could be stuck just completely unable to vote in many states. And what's really worrisome is that there are a couple states that are actually continuing to push voter ID requirements. I think of Kentucky right now, which during this horrible crisis, instead of trying to make voting easier, they're pushing hard and quickly to pass a very onerous voter ID law, which is certainly going to disenfranchise people moving forward. So what are you seeing about voter ID laws? What do you think we can do to combat that? And, you know, is this, should this be a real worry for those who are concerned about the right to vote during this crisis?

Yes. I mean, I think that with DMV offices closed around the country and many other government offices, like local county clerks not operating full hours, it could be very difficult for voters, even of voters who have transportation and financial means, to obtain an ID needed to vote or even to register to vote. And so when we see a state like Kentucky that has closed these government offices and given their citizens few options to obtain an id, yet, they're still going ahead with passing a voter ID requirement, I think it opens up a rather unprecedented way to attack these voter ID laws in court. Because when the Supreme Court has upheld voter ID laws in the past, it has been predicated upon the notion that it's relatively unburdensome to obtain an id. And while that's true for most people, you know, we know it's not true for certain classes of individuals. But nowadays with many of these government offices closed, it's going to be very difficult for most people to probably obtain an id. And I think there's a good chance that if Kentucky does pass this law, as Republicans want to, there will be a federal lawsuit and it will be interesting to watch whether it succeeds and opens the door to at least temporarily suspending these requirements for the November elections.

Right. And there's also litigation right now around the North Carolina voter ID law that you've been tracking very closely.

Yes. That law is the subject of multiple lawsuits at both the state and federal level that have temporarily suspended the law from being implemented while the litigation proceeds on the underlying merits of the cases. And there is a state level case where there is an injunction against the law that could hold through the November election, regardless of how the trial and ultimate rule ruling turnout later this year or in the future months.

And so it feels like a very long way away. But changing gears a bit, Steven, looking to November, are there any ballot initiatives that we should be watching?

Yeah. So unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic could be fatal for many of these ballot initiative efforts because they must obtain thousands and thousands of voter signatures from voters to qualify for the ballot in the first place. So the biggest topics as far as democracy reforms are concerned, first and foremost is redistricting. You know, 2020 is the last election before this decade's redistricting cycle will take place once the census is complete. So if States don't change their laws this year, it's very unlikely that reforms are going to pass before they actually draw new maps in the next two years. So there have been ongoing efforts to put initiatives on the ballot to reform redistricting. Arkansas, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Oregon. And of those, the effort in Arkansas has already announced that they are temporarily suspending the gathering of signatures. And they haven't signaled when they're going to start gathering them again or how they're going to start gathering them again. But hopefully states will start loosening their rules around how people can sign petitions. For instance, candidates also have to gather signatures in many states to qualify for the ballot for elected office. And in Utah, their Republican state government recently said that voters can start submitting their petition signatures either via physical mail or email. And hopefully more states will start to consider these sorts of measures. Aside from redistricting, there are voting rights ballot initiatives that contain provisions such as automatic registration, same day registration, or expanded voting access. And the biggest ones to watch this year are in Arizona, Missouri and Ohio. And all three of those states still haven't seen these measures qualify for the ballot yet. So if they aren't able to gather these signatures, they may have to wait until future election cycles to try to pass these reforms. Right.

And this year was really, you know, looking to be auspicious for these reforms because it was going to be a presidential election. Turnout was going to be, you know, potentially at an all time high. And you know, what we know, Stephen, is that when these reform initiatives are on the ballot, overwhelmingly they pass, you know, on gerrymandering, voting rights, money in politics, these are overwhelmingly popular. So the more people turning out, you know, makes it much more likely these things pass. So it really is going to be a shame if some of these initiatives, especially you were saying the voting rights or gerrymandering ones, don't make the ballot because it was really shaping up to be good year. But, you know, it's still possible. We'll see what happens, but that's definitely something that we should keep our eyes on. One other thing, Stephen, is in terms of kind of the immediate crisis is what's going on with the census, as listeners will remember. I did an interview with Beth Huang about why the census is the backbone of our democracy. And right now responses to the census are being collected. But obviously during this crisis, it makes the whole census process, which again is a decade in the making, much more difficult because right now is the self response time where everyone has mailed the census and many people are going to be filling it out online. But then census workers are supposed to go out and actually enumerate people physically. If they don't respond during the self response period, that's going to be very challenging and it might be a public health risk. So what's going on? Do you have any updates there and what are you thinking about the census and how we can ensure an accurate count even in these very difficult circumstances?

Yeah. So most importantly with regard to the 2020 census is that this is the first census in US history that is intended, it was intended and planned to be conducted primarily online. So luckily, census, the Census bureau wasn't planning on going door to door to get most people to respond. So Americans have several ways to respond to the census. They can do it online, they can do it by mail, or they can do it by phone. And doing it in that manner will obviate the need for census workers to come to your door in person. So hopefully, if many people respond via a remote method like that, the census won't have to have such a worry about risking exposure to the coronavirus that they otherwise would have. That being said, however, you know, there are many communities in the country that don't have great access to the Internet, particularly in immigrant communities, Latino communities where broadband coverage is not nearly as high. And those communities are much harder to count to begin with than other communities in the country. And so the census has to take extra steps to ensure that these people are counted. And typically this has involved going door to door. But because that's not possible, I've seen for instance, in South Texas, which is a heavily Latino community where many people don't speak English at home. You've had the census has adopted tactics seen in other countries, for instance, in Latin America, where you might have someone driving around with a loudspeaker in Spanish urging people to respond to the census. And so people are having to be creative and come up with other ways to get people's attention and tell them, hey, the census is happening and you need to respond if you want federal funding for your communities, if you want political representation that is equivalent to your community's size. So the census has postponed some of their in person operations. They've extended the period later this summer when they when they hope to conclude in person operations. But they're still kind of in a holding pattern when it comes to how they're going to ensure that everyone gets counted like they're supposed to.

Right.

And so for anybody listening today, the big takeaway is please fill out the census Immediately and make sure everybody, you know, fills it out, because now is the time to do it. And, you know, the best way to deal with it is to make sure that we get the highest self response rate possible. That will greatly reduce the potential downsides of an undercount and more work to do during the collection period. So you've been pretty vocal about how our electoral system is, to put it mildly, skewing the federal response to coronavirus, namely that the Electoral College largely can explain Trump's recent pretty terrible treatment of states such as New York and California. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah. So the Electoral College, because it operates on a state by state basis and because each state's electoral votes are almost all determined by a winner take all fashion, it allows the President to ignore voters in states that he's expected to lose, even his own supporters. And so in New York, which Trump has no hope of winning, he's pretty much left them to defend for themselves and has withheld federal funding and has not given them an adequate shipment of protective equipment. By contrast, however, you know, he's devoted extensive resources to the state of Florida, where he has an allied Republican governor, and he realizes that it's essential to his electoral prospects and also to his own business practices in South Florida, the Mar A Lago Club. So the Electoral College, you know, it allows someone like Trump, who doesn't really care about the average voter, to ignore the average voter and say he has no chance of winning and only focus on the voters he needs to win. And that's not a sound system, performing a national government. It might be okay to have a Congress where voters care most about their individual district, but they don't govern the whole country and they aren't expected to, but the President is. And so if we had a national popular vote, maybe Trump would still have the same response where he doesn't like these governors in blue states and he's not willing to play ball with them. But if he did that, he would suffer a penalty in popular support, where if he screws over his own voter base in these states, those voters might switch to his challenger. He doesn't have to worry about that. With the Electoral College structured the way it is. Right.

And this is an extremely clear example of the policy implications in kind of the most bare bones way of really unrepresentative electoral system. When citizens are not equal when electing the President, then bad outcomes can follow. And Steven, I think you're on the money here, and I think that more examples like this should be broadcast to the media. This is obviously during a crisis and is kind of the most visceral example. But we see this again and again when it comes to the Electoral College, whether it's, you know, farm subsidies or, you know, ethanol subsidies for Iowa, or, you know, trade tariffs. You mentioned recently on Twitter a great book called the Particularistic President. And there are a couple of great books about how policy is skewed largely by presidents trying to, for lack of a better expression, pander to swing state voters. That swing states, the ones that are the most competitive in the Electoral College, get an added benefit by being a swing state because presidents want to appeal to those voters largely through material or some sort of ends.

Yeah, I mean, politicians, broadly, they respond to their electoral incentives. And the way that we have structured our electoral institutions at the presidential level makes it so that, you know, the vast majority of states really don't matter. It's guaranteed that they're going to go one way or the other in a two party system. And both candidates have a strong incentive to tailor their campaigns to the swing states they need to win an Electoral College majority. And so a book like the Particularistic President by Douglas Criner and Andrew Reeves is looking at a wide variety of different policy areas where they find that presidents do tended to devote more resources to swing states or states that they win and need for their electoral coalition because they don't need to devote that same amount of resources and attention to states where they have no chance of winning. So if we waved away the Electoral College or even if we just relaxed the winner take all rule to make it so that candidates had more of an incentive to participate in every state, we might see less of these state by state divisions in resource allocations and the president might start acting more in the national interest, regardless of which states are inclined to support them or not. Right.

And let's. I want to take this step about really unequal electoral structures and how it skews policy outcomes back to the stimulus package, which is where we began this conversation, because Washington D.C. got less funding in the stimulus than it really deserved. And so to ask a bit of a leading question, why do you think that is? And is that a case for D.C. statehood?

I think this speaks at the fundamental disparity in Senate representation among the states and of course, among the territories in D.C. that have no representation. You know, the Republican majority itself is due entirely to this malapportionment of the Senate Republican senators, they represent over 10 million fewer constituents than Democrat senators do. They've won millions fewer votes than Democrats have done in the aggregate across the last three Senate elections, and yet they still have majority because the Senate is biased towards rural white voters and, and has a penalty against urban communities of color, especially places like the District of Columbia. So, yes, I think it makes a very strong case for D.C. statehood, even statehood for Puerto Rico, if the commonwealth wants statehood, because these voters and citizens are getting shortchanged because they have no representation and there is no electoral incentive for politicians to pay much attention to them at the federal level if they can't be voted in or out.

Right.

And again, this gets just to the core of why at equal citizens and as well as the countless other democracy organizations, why we constantly strive to say that democracy issues that the, you know, these, the principle of citizen equality isn't necessarily the most important issue, but it's the first issue that, yes, the, the ability to feed yourself, the ability to have housing, the ability to have clean air and water and to address climate change and to ensure that everybody has a livable wage, etc, etc, those are issues that are more important to your life. But unless you have some sort of election system that represents everybody equally, then the policies that come out of it will not represent everybody. And I think that is the key takeaway here, is that this is why, you know, we focus on the Electoral College or statehood for D.C. or money in politics, gerrymandering, voting rights, because it all comes back to the policies and this terrible, terrible virus has really laid bare the inequalities in the system as I think that you have absolutely brilliantly outlined. So, Stephen, thank you so much for joining me today. I thought this was an absolutely fantastic conversation. Can you tell our listeners where to find your work and how to find the voting Rights roundup? Because I really do think that the roundup is the real secret to the trade. People ask me often how do I know so much about what's happening about voting rights and gerrymandering and money in politics across the country? And my real secret is, well, I just follow Stephen's work. So, Stephen, how do people find your work and any final words about the current state of democracy in America?

Yeah, so thanks for having me on. It's been great to be discussing these pressing issues. And you can find Daily Coast Elections. My site is online at elections.dailycoast.com and that's dailykos.com and you can sign up for our free newsletter that includes the weekly Voting Rights Roundup where we're covering election law, the state of voting rights litigation and redistricting reform efforts, and things of that nature week to week. I will also recommend the Election Line newsletter, which is a nonpartisan publication, and I use that very extensively because they're great at tracking legislative action in the states and from a wide variety of local news sources. Yeah. So for final words, you know, I would say that definitely respond to the census online, by phone or by mail if you can. That way census workers will not have to come to your door. And if you can vote in a way that doesn't require you to go vote in person, please, please do that. But also recognize that not everyone has that luxury and we must be passing policies that include everyone. So when we're talking about voting by mail, that's great for most voters, but some voters need other policies to ensure that they can be able to vote. You know, we're going to have these elections in November regardless, and it's mainly a question of who will be able to access the ballot box or not. So we must ensure that everyone who wants to vote in November's general election can do so in a safe manner, because we don't want to be having an election where the losers are questioning the legitimacy of the outcome. And that is a very real risk if tens of millions of Americans are unable to cast their ballots and only certain classes of individuals have the ability to do so.

Well, Stephen, thanks so much for joining us. And this has been another episode of Another Way. We'll see you next time.

Sam.