Part One:
HOW WILL COVID-19 AFFECT THE 2020 ELECTIONS?
We speak with Lou Jacobson and Amy Sherman, from ProPublica, about their article analyzing the effect of COVID-19 on the 2020 elections. Florida recently held its presidential primary election, and now some of its election workers have come down with COVID-19. Will our country be able to hold in-person general elections come November? Will we be able to staff up the polling places with healthy officials who are willing to risk their health by doing the opposite of what public health officials are recommending: “social distancing”?
Are there any viable alternatives to voters going to the polls in-person to cast their ballots? We discuss the possibility of having all voters fill out a written ballot on their own and then mailing it to election officials. Or voters might drop them in a box at or near the polling place (outside, where one can keep one’s distance from other voters).
Some states have put such voting procedures into place but we have very limited data on how they’ve worked so far. What about the costs of using these procedures? Costs would include not only printing the ballots and the mailing cost, but also the extra officials who will probably be needed to make this process succeed.
And what about the risk to election security if we use a method other than in-person voting? We don’t want to lose the integrity and reliability of our democratic election system. While the US has not seen a great deal of voter fraud generally in our elections, the one area where there have been some problems has been with written ballots. Many political candidates and non-partisan “good government” groups usually send community watchdogs and voter protection people to polling places, to be present when the absentee ballots are opened and counted, in order to ensure the integrity of the absentee ballot counting process. So that’s a legitimate issue to be concerned about.
Even a bigger issue is with “spoiled ballots.” If voters make a mistake at the polling place or don’t understand all aspects of filling out the ballot (or ballots get torn or mismarked, etc.), at least there are election officials who can help them or give them a clean ballot to cast. Not so, if voters mail in a “spoiled” ballot.
Part Two:
AIR POLLUTION MAKES COVID-19 EVEN MORE DAMAGING
We talk to Jamie Smith Hopkins, reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, about her story in Mother Jones about environmental degradation and how air pollution makes many of us even more susceptible to COVID-19. This deadly combination has a disproportionate effect on people of color, poor people, and other marginalized communities, raising issues of environmental justice that we must deal with.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION USES COVID-19 AS AN EXCUSE TO SUSPEND ENFORCEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.
We also discuss the Trump administration’s decision to suspend enforcement of environmental laws during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump is hiding behind a national crisis to carry out his agenda of rolling back progress that our country has made in addressing environmental degradation.
