During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi has largely adopted the approach that people need to be given alternatives that make them comfortable as long as there is a virus raging that has killed more than 2,000 in this state and more than 170,000 nationwide.
Schools are told that if they are going to have in-person instruction, they need to also provide a virtual alternative for families that are not ready to send their children to classrooms, even where everyone is wearing a mask.
Employers are told that wherever possible, they should try to accommodate employees who wish to work from home. Restaurants are urged to expand their take-home business, provide outdoor seating if they can and rely less on serving their customers at tables indoors.
One glaring exception to accommodating people’s fears is at the ballot box. Mississippi stands among the few states — mostly Republican-dominated ones — that are bucking the trend to make it easy to vote by mail and avoid the possibility of getting infected at a precinct on Election Day.
The Mississippi Legislature slightly broadened earlier this year the rules that allow for voting by absentee ballot to take into account the pandemic. It added to the list of qualified excuses if someone is under quarantine per a doctor’s order or is caring for someone who has been put under quarantine.
Lawmakers, however, made no provision for those under the age of 65 who have underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible to bad outcomes if they contract the virus, nor for those who are just frightened about getting close to others until COVID-19 is under better control.
During one of the Sunday morning news talk shows, “Face the Nation,” this past weekend, Gov. Tate Reeves was grilled aggressively by CBS host Margaret Brennan as to why Mississippi is not being more lenient with mail-in voting this year, as most states are.
Reeves did not try to offer much of an explanation. Maybe that’s because there is not much of an explanation to provide, other than the common, but factually incorrect, Republican assumption that mail-in ballots favor Democratic candidates.
There is admittedly a greater risk of voter impersonation with mail-in ballots than in-person voting, but the fraud is generally isolated, plus there are ways to combat it, as states that do a lot of mail-in voting have shown.
Oregon, for example, conducts all of its elections by mail. It uses bar codes to verify ballots and compares the voter’s signature on the mailed-in ballot with other public documents accessible to election officials, such as a driver’s license. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, determined that out of 50 million ballots cast by mail in Oregon, only 17 cases of fraud were found.
It would be a little late in the game to implement these anti-fraud procedures in Mississippi for the upcoming election. Nevertheless, when balancing the risk of voter fraud with the risk of COVID-19 transmission, the latter seems a whole lot more likely if voters are forced to line up in crowded precincts.
The governor has repeatedly said that if the public will take some commonsense steps, such as wear a mask and practice social distancing, the coronavirus can be beat back. It also makes common sense to not require people to vote in person when they can easily be given a safer alternative.
