Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. HOMEPAGE

Long lines, missing mail-in ballots and confusion this week exposed the problems that could plague the November election

Maryland voting .JPG
Maryland election judge Cassandra Campbell helps a voter wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cast his ballot in the Maryland U.S. presidential primary election as other voters stand in a long line waiting to cast their votes in College Park, Maryland, U.S., June 2, 2020 REUTERS/Jim Bourg

  • Nine states held a mix of presidential, congressional and other down-ballots on Tuesday, June 2, the biggest election day yet since the coronavirus pandemic began and an important test for November.
  • Several states, like Michigan, Montana, and Iowa have been able to smoothly transition to massively scaling up their absentee and vote-by-mail systems.
  • But other states and cities, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, and D.C., failed to ensure every voter could cast a ballot despite ambitious efforts to encourage everyone to vote by mail if possible. 
  • Voters in all three places reported not receiving their mail-in ballots in time, getting incorrectly printed or confusing ballots, and facing long lines, often with heavy law enforcement presence nearby, at crowded city polling locations. 
  • "Pennsylvania voters faced unnecessary hurdles to the ballot at every turn in this primary election," a voting rights advocate said.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Advertisement

If the June 2 elections were a stress test for November, many states and cities exposed glaring failures, with millions of absentee ballots not reaching voters in time, ballots being incorrectly printed or containing errors when they did reach voters, and others who did not get ballots in time despite risking their health to wait in long lines at polling places.

Nine states held a mix of presidential, congressional and other down-ballots on Tuesday, June 2, the biggest election day yet since the coronavirus pandemic began and the first large-scale test run in some states of preparing for November elections. 

To be sure, many states have been able to scale up to holding elections smoothly and with great success. But Tuesday shows that this kind of large-scale shift in a country where the majority of voters are used to voting in-person on election day presents may challenges.

Montana, which already has high levels of mail-in voting, sent every voter a mail-in ballot for their Tuesday primaries and saw exceptionally high turnout for a primary in a pandemic, with 63% of voters returning their ballots.

Advertisement

Iowa, which sent out an absentee ballot application to every registered voter on Tuesday, set a new record for voter turnout in June elections. 

"We have surpassed the all-time turnout record for a June primary, with more than 487,000 ballots cast & more still coming in," Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, wrote on Twitter. "The previous high in Iowa was 449,490 in 1994. My hats off to Iowa voters, poll workers and county auditors. Awesome job."

In the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, which all held presidential and down-ballot primaries on Tuesday, a similar pattern emerged: state officials made ambitious efforts to encourage all voters to cast ballots by mail if possible, but struggled to meet the massive demand for mail-in ballots.

Then, voters who didn't receive ballots at or didn't get them in time to mail in had to risk exposing themselves to COVID-19 voting in person, often waiting in long lines to vote at understaffed and crowded polling places and in some cities, feeling intimidated by heavy police or even National Guard presence brought in to control crowds in cities like D.C. and Philadelphia. 

Advertisement
People wear masks as they wait in line to vote at a voting center during primary voting in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
People wear masks as they wait in line to vote at a voting center during primary voting in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Associated Press

The mismanagement of elections in D.C. and Maryland are prompting hearings, investigations, and calls for officials to resign

In Washington, DC, the confluence of the immense strain of the pandemic and civil unrest in the city led to confusion about where to vote, long lines, and confusion about whether voting would violate an emergency curfew, leading to an election that Slate called "an unmitigated disaster" with Politico describing one polling station as a "failure of democracy." 

Before coronavirus struck the nation's capitol, D.C. allowed all registered voters to vote by mail without an excuse and elect to do so permanently.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the District strongly encouraged voters to request mail-in ballots for the June 2 presidential and city council primary elections while drastically reducing the number of open polling places from the usual 144 vote centers that would ordinarily be open to just 20. 

But D.C. had significant problems with scaling up their mail-in voting as 92,000 voters requested ballots, a massive increase from the 7,321 D.C. residents who voted by mail in the 2016 presidential primary.

Advertisement

Both media outlets like the Washington Post, and several city councilmembers reported hearing from thousands of D.C. voters — including many who requested ballots far in advance — that they did not receive their ballots at all or until the day of the election. 

In addition to the drastic reduction in polling places, the protests against police brutality and the resulting massive influx of federal law enforcement presence led the city to impose a curfew of 7 p.m., despite the fact that polls didn't close for another hour until 8 p.m. 

Voting rights advocates immediately expressed concern with the city imposing a curfew before polls closed. The non-partisan Campaign Legal Center wrote a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser's office warning that the conflicting messages would confuse many would-be voters into thinking they couldn't go out and cast a ballot, in addition to voters not having a clear way to identify themselves to law enforcement while traveling to and from the polls. 

As the letter noted, the polls closing after curfew combined with a heavy law enforcement presence in the city would disproportionately affect black voters, who were more likely to live in council wards with lower rates of absentee ballot requests. 

Advertisement

While the mayor's office sent out a cell-phone alert to all D.C. residents on the day of the election clarifying that essential workers and people in line to vote would be exempt from the curfew, voters in multiple different wards of the city reported being reprimanded by law enforcement for being out past curfew. 

"The problems that we warned of in our letter, unfortunately, did come to pass," Ravi Doshi, senior voting rights counsel at the CLC, told Insider in a Thursday phone interview. "Having law enforcement near a voting site is quite obviously intimidating to voters and it can very well dissuade voters from exercising their fundamental right to vote. It's exactly why we thought it would be problematic for a curfew to be imposed before voting ends." 

 

Maryland, which held its June 2 primary elections almost entirely by mail by sending every registered voter a mail-in ballot, also experienced numerous problems in getting correct ballots out to voters and processing them on the other side, the Baltimore Sun reported. 

Maryland and SeaChange, the vendor the state used to provide their mail-ballots, pointed fingers at each other for problems and mix-ups that delayed the arrival of 333,000 Maryland ballots and led to some being mistakenly sent to South Carolina, which uses the same vendor. 

Advertisement

Not only did some Baltimore and Montgomery County voters not get their ballots in time, leading to some areas opening new polling places and ballot drop-boxes at the last minute, but voters reported receiving ballots with the wrong election date and incorrect postage instructions.

And on the night of the election itself, a printing error for ballots sent to residents of one Baltimore City Council district meant that the ballots themselves could not be immediately processed, and the results had to be taken offline and completely redone over the next few days. 

Like D.C. and other big cities, the problems with Maryland's execution of an all-mail election that drove voters who didn't get their ballots in time went to go vote in person in Baltimore, which also had fewer polling places and ballot drop-boxes open to voters than normal. 

The myriad problems in both places led to unprecedented calls for investigations, hearings, and the top election officials in Maryland, Baltimore, and D.C. to step down for their positions, the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun reported.

Advertisement

Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford, for example, called for Linda Lamone, the administrator of the Maryland Board of Elections who has served in the position since 1997, to be fired or step down from the position. 

In addition to calling for D.C. Board of Elections Chair Michael Bennett to step down (he told the Post he would not), multiple councilmembers are asking for independent audits and are already scheduling hearings into what went wrong. 

But voting rights experts like Doshi said that while the unprecedented civil unrest and heavy federal law enforcement presence threw a wrench into election day in some cities, many of the stumbles plaguing D.C.'s election were ultimately avoidable. 

"The broader picture here is that Tuesday's problems in D.C. weren't exclusively related to the curfew overlapping with election day," Doshi said. "A lot of these issues arose from COVID-19 and the fact that the city was underprepared to hold an election during the pandemic."

Advertisement
Marty Goetz, right, and Diane White, prepare the voting screens as they start to set up a polling place Monday, June 1, 2020, for the voting for Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary in Jackson Township near Zelienople, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Marty Goetz, right, and Diane White, prepare the voting screens as they start to set up a polling place Monday, June 1, 2020, for the voting for Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary in Jackson Township near Zelienople, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) Associated Press

'We saw a variety of failures on Tuesday'

Despite weeks to prepare, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had all the makings of the perfect storm for a chaotic election day. 

The state, which held its first-ever election with no-excuse absentee voting both during a pandemic and with heavy law enforcement presence in some major cities over the George Floyd protests, received 1.8 million absentee ballot requests, with county election officials struggling to meet the volume and thousands of voters not receiving ballots in time. 

But in a Thursday press briefing hosted by several Pennsylvania-based voting access professionals, advocates expressed frustration and disappointment that after Pennsylvania having over two months to prepare for the election after postponing its primary from April 28 to Tuesday, so many voters were still disenfranchised.

"While it is laudable that Pennsylvania officials processed almost 2 million mail-in ballot applications, they fell short fulfilling their obligations to democracy," Scott Seeborg, the Pennsylvania State Director of advocacy group All Voting is Local, said. "Pennsylvania voters faced unnecessary hurdles to the ballot at every turn in this primary election."

Advertisement

At the last minute on Monday, Gov. Tom Wolf issued an executive order extending the deadline for absentee ballots from voters in Philadelphia and five other counties that reported problems with voters not getting their ballots on time to arrive, allowing them to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive by 5 p.m. on June 9.

"Even in ideal circumstances, which this was not, we knew there would be a steep learning curve," Sara Mullen of the Pennsylvania Civil Liberties Union said, adding, "It wasn't a surprise to find out that we heard of a lot of complaints from voters that they were not receiving ballots at all or received them too late."

In Delaware County, which includes the suburbs immediately southwest of Philadelphia, Mullen said that the county was forthright in admitting that it sent out 6,000 mail-in ballots to voters the very day before the election on June 1 and failed to get ballots out to 400 voters who requested them. 

Mullen said that thousands of voters in York and Allegheny counties did not receive ballots at all despite requesting them weeks in advance, describing Montgomery County's election administration as a "comedy of errors," including people getting ballots for the wrong party in the primary, people not receiving ballots at all due to their apartment numbers being cut off on the envelope, and some containing confusing instructions. 

Advertisement

The police clashes with protesters and the COVID-19 crisis made voting an extra risky and frightening proposition for voters belonging to marginalized communities, said Erin Kramer, the executive director of advocacy group One Pennsylvania. 

"What we saw were consolidated polling locations in black communities that did not allow for social distancing, combined polling location staff that were not trained on how to work together, and in communities that had seen...a National Guard presence or local law enforcement armed with riot gear, people were asked to exercise their franchise in that context," Kramer said. "We saw a variety of failures on Tuesday."

As Doshi of the Campaign Legal Center also pointed out, Pennsylvania and especially the counties that have extended absentee ballot arrival deadlines, are still counting ballots from many elections — a pattern Americans can expect to see more of throughout this year and in November. 

"In certain states, we don't have results for certain elections yet. That's something that we can expect to happen when you have this surge in absentee voting," he said. "Mail-in ballots are going to take a little bit longer to count. And so it doesn't indicate anything nefarious. It just indicates there's a good reason why it might take longer to get results."

Advertisement
Pennsylvania elections
Processing work on mail in ballots for the Pennsylvania Primary election is being done by Emily Pellegrino, left, and Danielle Beardsley at the Butler County Bureau of Elections, Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Butler, P AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

November doesn't have to be a repeat scenario if officials act now

In a Wednesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights, election officials and voting rights activists expressed dismay at how some of Tuesday's elections unfolded.

"In 46 states and the District of Columbia, all voters have a right to request a mail-in ballot," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said. "But as we saw yesterday, that right is implemented with varying degrees of effectiveness. This need is particularly acute in...historically disenfranchised communities where distrust in government is high."

Both in the hearing and in a May 20 interview with Insider, Benson emphasized that the coronavirus crisis doesn't have to be a catastrophe for elections, and that Michigan and other states prove with the right preparation and planning, elections can still be secure, and run smoothly in a pandemic.

In May 5th's local elections in Michigan, the state sent out absentee ballot requests to every voter with ballot-tracking, trained new election workers, invested in high-speed ballot processing machines to make the vote-counting process faster, and provide personal protective equipment to keep election officials and poll-workers safe. 

Advertisement

Myrna Pérez, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy and Voting Rights program, said there are several concrete steps states can take in advance to ensure every voter can cast a ballot, including increasing funding to state and local election administrators, but given the many complex issues that popped up on Tuesday, they have to start acting now.

"It is indeed possible..to ensure our elections this fall are safe, accurate, and secure," Benson said, adding, "Educating voters about choices and rights is the job of chief election officers." 

2020 election Voting
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.

Jump to

  1. Main content
  2. Search
  3. Account