The unfold of the novel coronavirus throughout the US is severely complicating the Democratic presidential main season. On Saturday, Georgia int
The unfold of the novel coronavirus throughout the US is severely complicating the Democratic presidential main season.
On Saturday, Georgia introduced it might postpone its March 24 main, a transfer that adopted Louisiana’s choice to maneuver its April four contest — each states cited issues over the unfold of the coronavirus as the rationale. Georgia moved its main to Might 19; Louisiana will maintain its main on June 20.
Regardless of this delay, the subsequent set of primaries on Tuesday, March 17 — in Arizona, Illinois, Florida, and Ohio — are going forward as scheduled. Election officers in all 4 states have argued that voting doesn’t pose an enormous threat of virus publicity, and pledged to take additional care to maintain voting areas clear.
However the leaders of Louisiana and Georgia disagree.
Friday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards stated issues over the well being of voters and volunteers led him to order a delay.
“The explanations embody bearing in mind the older age of nearly all of precinct volunteers and employees, and the necessity to cut back public contact, and likewise to permit most participation by all voters, no matter their age and their well being circumstances,” Edwards said.
And Saturday, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said, “Occasions are transferring quickly and my highest precedence is defending the well being of our ballot employees, their households, and the neighborhood at giant.”
However Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — every of which have a number of reported circumstances of coronavirus —are going forward with their primaries. Secretaries of state from every of these states put out a joint statement on Friday explaining why:
In contrast to concert events, sporting occasions or different mass gatherings the place giant teams of individuals journey lengthy distances to congregate in a confined house for an prolonged time period, polling areas see individuals from a close-by neighborhood coming into and out of the constructing for a brief period.
Additional, steerage from voting machine producers on how finest to sanitize machines, steerage from CDC on finest practices for hand washing, and steerage from our respective state well being officers is being supplied to each polling location.
People have participated in elections throughout difficult occasions up to now, and primarily based on the perfect info we now have from public well being officers, we’re assured that voters in our states can safely and securely solid their ballots on this election, and that in any other case wholesome ballot employees can and may perform their patriotic duties on Tuesday.
From a public well being perspective, there are some pink flags within the assertion.
Polling areas within the US typically have lengthy strains and might require voters to attend for hours. For instance, individuals waited as much as six hours to solid their ballots in Texas and California on Tremendous Tuesday. That isn’t a brief interval of publicity.
Crystal Watson, a senior scholar on the Johns Hopkins Middle for Well being Safety, instructed The Atlantic that the scenario poses clear dangers of spreading coronavirus. “Once you convey individuals collectively in shut proximity for prolonged durations of time, that’s the place you see explosions of illness. It’s robust to remain aside if you’re standing in a line,” she stated.
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention says that coronavirus passes generally between people who find themselves inside about six ft of one another. That’s a higher distance than most individuals preserve between one another in lengthy strains, and never everybody who votes on Tuesday will likely be satisfied that the coronavirus is a trigger for concern or additional distancing.
The Atlantic reports that the states are taking steps to attempt to make voting cubicles hygienic and to guard election employees, and that Ohio has closed over 100 polling areas which can be close to susceptible populations, akin to nursing properties.
However in a manner these measures simply show that the states are very a lot conscious of how dangerous that is within the first place. If it’s too harmful to let individuals vote close to senior residents — lots of whom are probably the most lively voters in American politics — then possibly that’s an indication that an alternate voting technique, just like the emergency vote-by-mail measure proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is perhaps clever to contemplate.