To the editor:
Three things are both urgent and important during the COVID-19 pandemic: protecting lives and health, restoring the economy, and safeguarding democracy. The first two issues are receiving a lot of attention. The third, safeguarding democracy, needs more.
We must be able to vote safely this fall. Expanding vote by mail and making sure voters know about this voting method will give us all a safer option.
Uncertainty about the virus will likely remain in November. Now is the time to strengthen and expand safe access to voting so we’re ready.
Recent research at Stanford University finds that voting by mail does not give either political party an advantage. Hopefully we will see bipartisan cooperation to encourage voting by mail in North Carolina. According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, “No special circumstance or reason is needed to receive and vote a mail-in absentee ballot.” We’re lucky in North Carolina that we can already vote by mail for any reason, but many people are not aware of this provision.
The NCSBOE has made several important recommendations to be sure we can vote safely in the fall, including making the process for mail in voting simpler for voters and county boards of election, providing postage-paid ballots, and being sure there are adequate poll workers available to assist those who choose to vote in person.
We need to be planning now so that we can prevent the unconscionable choice we saw in Wisconsin when people stood in line in defiance of the state’s medical stay-at-home order because voting was so important that they put their lives and health at risk to do so. Gov. Roy Cooper, Phil Berger and Tim Moore should work together to make sure no one in North Carolina is faced with this choice.