Voting in 2020
In the news and political rhetoric lately, there have been many stories of problems with the vote itself. Just scrolling through a news feed, there are many mixed messages about the security of the 2020 election. This can be confusing. So, I decided to try to research voting infrastructure. I won’t cover voter registration, the electoral college, misinformation, or other related topics around elections. While those are all worthy of discussion, only so much can be fit into one column with limited research time.
Mail-in Ballots
First, the elephant in the room. Though many politicians don’t trust mail-in ballots as they say they are susceptible to fraud, there is not much to back up those claims. Multiple studies have shown voter fraud from mail-in ballots is exceedingly rare, and it has been backed up in the courts. Simply put, it is hard to commit voter fraud.
There are actual problems though, mainly concerning how hard it can be to vote by mail, not how easy it is. While mail-in ballots are not particularly prone to fraud, they do have a higher rate of ballot spoilage. They require more security checks and specific instructions, so it’s more likely that a ballot could be invalidated. Depending on who is using mail-in voting and how much accurate information they’ve received about it, this could disadvantage some groups in the vote count. While most states do offer ways to check in on your ballot and fix this kind of issue, it can be inconvenient for voters.
Further concerns come with how ballot boxes are handled and the timing of voting. If officials restrict the number of ballot boxes, as happened in Ohio recently, this could make voting harder. Mail-in voting also drags out the election process, making it more likely for the media and politicians to call elections when they really shouldn’t. Plus, in many places, legitimate concerns like being infected aren’t enough to get an absentee ballot. Many of these problems result from people and governments not being used to mail-in voting; the concerns are not intrinsic to the method of voting, but they are relevant right now. Arguably, these difficulties don’t outweigh the benefits of decreased transmission risk and increased convenience, but this is still an area to improve upon.
In-Person Voting
In some ways, the election will be more secure than past elections. It’s estimated that 95 percent of voters will be using a method that establishes a paper trail, due to both an improvement in in-person voting technology and higher mail-in voting rates. So, most votes will have paper copies to fall back on if the first count is somehow put in doubt. Compared to previous years where a larger proportion of purely electronic systems were used, this is very encouraging.
Still, even with better technology in-person voting has clear problems. In early voting, people have had to wait in extremely long lines. The placement of polling stations, effectively changing how many people are using the same spot to vote and thus how easy it is to vote, can be manipulated to suppress the vote. This kind of inconvenience is also now a public health hazard. It shouldn’t be acceptable normally, let alone during a pandemic.
Furthermore, prominent politicians including President Donald Trump have made calls to civilians to watch the polls in a very militaristic manner. This could easily be interpreted as encouraging voter intimidation. It’s unclear how many people are taking these calls seriously as early in-person voting turnout is high, but there are some stories of people being harassed at polls. This is a worrying contrast from normal poll watching, which is a nonpartisan, routine role that requires lots of training. Moreover, many of these tactics are particularly common in suppressing the vote of ethnic minorities.
Computers
On the software side, both companies and the government have been working to dismantle potential threats and improve cybersecurity so that the vote is safer. For example, both Microsoft and the United States Cyber Command (apparently a real branch of the U.S. government related to the NSA) began working independently to take down the same criminal Russian hacking operation, TrickBot, before realizing someone else was attempting the same. This reflects a clear ramping up of proactive anti-hacking operations before the election.
Notably, many experts have remarked that the real danger of election hacking is not the direct effect of interference. The real danger is the perception of a hack. A relatively small hack, say in a few counties, can diminish people’s trust of the election results at large. There is a need to take down potential interference, but it is not for the reason most people think. This risk is also decreased by the paper records mentioned earlier.
Conclusion
Just by looking at a single part of the election process -the act of casting a vote- it’s clear that there are opportunities for disenfranchisement and compromising results. Unsurprisingly, this is especially true for groups that society treats unfairly in general, such as minorities and lower-income people. However, there are also reasons to have hope. The turnout for early voting so far is already at very high levels. All kinds of voter information efforts have been deployed by regular people. Experts are working to combat potential election hacks.
Most people will likely assess whether democracy worked well enough during this election on the nature of the victory, due to the mixed voting circumstances and high political stakes. From the viewpoint of late October though, some things are clear. No matter the results, as a society we need to keep working to improve our voting systems.
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/13/912519039/a-look-at-voter-suppression-tactics-ahead-of-the-election
https://time.com/5902731/trump-poll-watchers/
Image Sources:
http://content.king5.com/photo/2016/08/01/ballotdropbox1_1470090463466_4433741_ver1.0.jpg
