LETTER: Election process must be kept intact
Mona Charen’s op-ed in the March 23 edition is spot-on in arguing the importance of keeping our election process intact. She makes some very sound arguments about the mistrust and concern of the left-of-center voters about Donald Trump’s motives and a potential legitimacy crisis. The need to hold our election as normal is more important now than ever. There is a great divide in this country about how our leaders are running the country, handling the coronavirus pandemic, and serving the people who elected them. This coming election is critical in determining the direction our country is headed.
Charen has some well-meaning suggestions about how to hold the election and continue to meet the needs of social distancing. She points out some of the potential flaws in the mail-in system and suggests a weeklong election instead of a one-day process. While on the surface this is not a bad idea, it has many flaws as well. What she fails to realize is that while this process may solve the issue of large gatherings, it doesn’t solve the already existing problem of who is going to run the polls.
As it is, we have a problem in this country of getting people to volunteer to work the polls for one day, let alone trying to cover it for a week. The judge of elections and the minority and majority inspectors of each polling location are elected positions. You would be asking each of these people to give up a week of their time to cover the polls. In addition, many polling places are active on a daily basis and set aside their normal operations for that one day. You’d be asking them to give up a week also. Given the current situation of so many places being closed due to the virus, asking them to give up another week in November is just not practical.
I agree with Charen that we need to do something to ensure our election happens as scheduled. However, any option would require planning well in advance of Election Day. The bureaucracy in this country has shown time and again that it doesn’t do well at planning. The current administration has made that painfully clear in its poor initial response to and denial of the coronavirus outbreak. That is costing people’s lives. A failure to plan for and properly execute the election process would most certainly bring about a legitimacy crisis. While not properly planning for modifying the election process due to the current situation won’t cost lives, it will potentially cost something almost as precious – our democracy. In the midst of the current disaster, we cannot take our eyes off November and the election. To do so would be putting us on the path to another disaster, and one disaster in a lifetime is more than any of us can afford.
Richard Ward
McDonald