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 170,000 nationwide.
Schools are told that if they are going to have in-person instruction, they also need to 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.
Earlier this year, to take into account the pandemic, the Mississippi Legislature slightly broadened the rules that allow for voting by absentee ballot. It added to the list of qualified excuses if someone is under quarantine by 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,” last 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.
That’s the line that Donald Trump peddles, even though research has shown that GOP voters are just as likely as Democrats to vote by mail where it’s been made more available.
There is admittedly a greater risk of voter impersonation with mail-in ballots than in-person voting, but the fraud is generally isolated, and 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 possibility of spreading the virus 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 common-sense steps, such as wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, the coronavirus can be beaten back. It also makes common sense to not require people to vote in person when they can easily be given a safer alternative.
