«Мы не узнаем, кем является президент, до ноября». Это Сценарии Беспокойных Чиновников Выборов

Washington Secretary of Suppose Kim Wyman is shy. In her negate, counting ballots on the total entails election officers working shoulder to shoulder, every so often a complete bunch to a room. It’s a scene that’s nearly incredible in the period of coronavirus. So Washington is engaged on security measures, from increasing the house in processing centers to setting up plexiglass between work stations.

Health and hygiene are best the delivery. While all Washington elections are conducted by mail, diverse states are much less outfitted or experienced with handling the gargantuan volumes of mail or absentee ballots this twelve months will characteristic attributable to the pandemic. Already states cherish Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia maintain seen delayed results and reports of voter disenfranchisement attributable to arapid growth of vote by mail.

“I’m concerned nationally that you’re going to maintain this crush of mail-in ballots that come in on Election Day all one of the most simplest ways by the nation, the amount goes to swamp election officers, and so that they effect now now not seem to be going so as to physically accumulate by the processing for days or weeks,” says Wyman, a Republican. “I mediate that we’re now now not going to know who the President is until effectively into November.”

Since March, the Nationwide Affiliation of Secretaries of Suppose elections committee has been maintaining a weekly call to swap recordsdata on preparing for an unparalleled election. There are a complete bunch (thousands!) of ideas an election can plod awry anyway, nevertheless the coronavirus pandemic has complex preparations. It’s now now not appropriate the intake of absentee ballots that’s being concerned officers cherish Wyman. The pandemic has brought up a range of most contemporary disorders, from figuring out whether coronavirus is a sound motive voters can cite to position a query to an absentee ballotto recruiting ballotworkers to rising certain there are ample monetary resources to construct the most predominant adaptations.

Nothing much less is at stake than the integrity of The United States’s elections and voters’ religion in the task. And it’s a droop in opposition to time for states to pull it off. “You asked me what keeps me up at night time,” Wyman says. “This is it.”

TIME interviewed 9 secretaries of negate from both parties. Here are their top considerations:

Will coronavirus be judged a sound motive to position a query to an absentee ballotfor the favorite election?

A few third of statesrequire that votersprovide a justification for soliciting for absentee-ballotfunctions. When it turned into certain that coronavirus used to be going to impress most predominant contests, election officers in those states needed to discover whether COVID-19 used to be a sound scientific excuse. The resolution, in all statesnevertheless Texas and Mississippi, used to be sure.

States cherishKentucky,Indiana, andLouisianamade adjustments equivalent to opening absentee vote casting toall eligible voters orshedding the askfrom the absentee-ballotapplication. But none of those adjustments primarily extend to the favorite election.

In West Virginia, one other negate that requires a motive to build up an absentee ballot, clerks task the absentee ballotfunctions andmail them outto other people which are eligible. “We’re getting asked that every the time,” says West Virginia Secretary of Suppose Mac Warner, a Republican. “I mediate it’s an much less pricey, rational motive, and I suspect that the clerks will catch that as a explanation for sending them absentee ballots.” But Warner, who plans to meet with the county clerks now that the first is over, acknowledged he didn’t but maintain a agency resolution.

In Alabama, Secretary of Suppose John Merrill, the chair of the Republican Secretaries of Suppose Committee, says it’s “undoubtedly now now not” certain that voters will again be ready to examine the bodily illness or infirmity field on theirabsentee ballotapplicationover COVID-19 considerations, the formula they are ready to forrunoff electionson July 14.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen for November. And we don’t need to head forward and build pointers for a duration of time that has but to arrive,” Merrill says. Several diverse Secretaries of Suppose from both parties wired the importance of early preparations, noting that delays in planning would possibly presumably lead to chaos.

Will in-person vote casting choices be ready?

Election officers are shy about recruiting ballotworkers,a kind of whom are aged, hanging them in a excessive-possibility neighborhood for the coronavirus. States are taking artistic approaches to scheme substitutes, equivalent to recruiting Nationwide Honor Society excessive college college students brief of community service hours. No longer having ample ballotworkers challenging to work one day of a virulent disease has already confirmed to be a pitfall in states cherish Georgia and Wisconsin, whose primaries featuredlengthy linesandballotsitesthat had been forced to shut. (Georgia’s disordershad been also in fractionbrought on bycurrent vote casting machines.)

States are also busy securing Personal Holding Instruments for ballotworkers,from masks to hand sanitizer. Maine, as an illustration, is having a scrutinize at procuring pens for voters to eradicate but one other ground they need to undergo in ideas of disinfecting, in accordance with Secretary of Suppose Matthew Dunlap.

In California, the Governorhas orderedthat every registered voters be mailed ballots for the favorite election. But Secretary of Suppose Alex Padilla also stresses the importance of providing ample in-person vote casting choices for folks which are unable to vote early or by mail. “We’re going to clearly be emphasizing vote by mail, vote by mail, vote by mail. But right here is now now not [a] vote-by-mail best election,” Padilla says. “We’re committed to the in-person choices for the voters who need it, whether it’s out of accessibility considerations, perchance language assistance that’s required, replacement ballots that can presumably be most predominant, or to proceed to allow for same-day registration, which now we maintain in California.”

Is there ample money to position the most predominant measures in hassle?

Mighty of the election preparation is being paid for with federal funds from the CARES Act, a coronavirus-response bill Congress handed in March, which allocated$400 million bucksfor states to alter their election procedures attributable to the virus. The bill requires states who exercise federal funding match a fraction of that money with some of their very hold. Rustling up that money has equipped challenges for states whose revenues maintain cratered.

Wayne Thorley, Deputy for Elections in Nevada, stated in an e mail that coming up with matching funds does “signify a well-known hardship, and we’re tranquil now now not certain precisely how we’re going to meet the match.” Inan April 2 letterto Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Paul Pate, the Republican Secretary of Suppose from Iowa, outlined some of those considerations on behalf of the Nationwide Affiliation of Secretaries of Suppose. But election officers uncover TIME they’re uncertain how precisely the topic will be resolved.

And heaps Secretaries of Suppose assume they need extra money to pull off the adjustments required by the virus. “It can presumably be very purposeful if the federal authorities would possibly presumably give one other spherical of CARES Act money attributable to we’re seeing that the pandemic and all its penalties has touched so many more parts of our society, along with our elections, and admittedly we didn’t accumulate any place shut to as powerful enhance for elections as we must tranquil maintain in the last spherical,” Kathy Boockvar, Secretary of the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania, stated in a Zoom interview from her home.

Boockvar says the extra money would plod at the moment to the counties, providing gear and affords. The Brennan Heart estimates that Congress must tranquilconstruct $4 billionin extra funds available to construct the most predominant adjustments.“Given the scope of the negate, gargantuan-scale preparation, backed by the concerted enhance of the authorities and the general public, is wished at the moment to substantiate that the 2020 election is free, aesthetic, accessible, and right,” thefile states.

Write toLissandra Villa atlis