Posted on 03/16/2020 1:41:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
On Friday, an exhausted-looking election official in Arizona was speaking at a press conference about the state’s upcoming primary when he gave up, mid-speech. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” said Maricopa County election day director Scott Jarrett, before he left the platform, and the room. It had been a difficult week. Arizona election officials were organizing a vote while also figuring out how to protect voters from the novel coronavirus. State officials fought in court over the legality of mail-in ballots, and 78 polling places — many of them schools and nursing homes — pulled out of participating in Tuesday’s primary.
So how ‘bout this election in the middle of a pandemic? The novel coronavirus is capable of spreading through human contact and objects we’ve touched. It hits older people harder. Public health experts are advising that everyone cancel large gatherings to prevent its spread. Which leaves something like a primary election, where an overwhelmingly older electorate files through lines, touches shared pens, and coughs on each other, in an awkward spot.
Yet 26 states still need to vote. Arizona isn’t the only state struggling to figure out what to do. Wyoming will no longer have an in-person caucus — it’s now vote by mail only. Louisiana and Georgia have postponed their primaries.
And there’s good reason for those states to change plans. Primary elections really are a setting at which coronavirus could spread, said Sam Scarpino, a professor of environmental sciences at Northeastern University. He studies infectious diseases, models their spread and does outbreak surveillance. If a state isn’t postponing the primary, it should be taking the risks seriously and making plans to reduce transmission — regularly cleaning and disinfecting shared equipment like voting machines throughout the day, and creating more physical distance between voters.
The CDC made similar recommendations — adding that the first line of defense should be encouraging ways to vote while being socially distant, such as vote-by-mail, early voting, voting during off-peak hours and drive-up voting. “The best solution to protect voters – especially older voters – is in fact mail-in voting,” Maimuna Majumder, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School’s Computational Health Informatics Program, wrote to me in an email. Just don’t lick the envelope, she added.
But it’s not going to be easy to reduce crowding and increase cleaning when the number of polling places is shrinking and disinfecting supplies are scarce. About 130 polling places in Ohio have dropped out because they were also the homes of vulnerable populations, according to Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper. As of Friday, replacements were being arranged and voters contacted about the changes, but it’s likely a lot of Ohioans will show up Tuesday to find a notice telling them they need to go to a different location. In Arizona, Maricopa County is dealing with the problem by establishing 111 new Vote Anywhere centers beyond the 40 it originally had, where county residents can vote regardless of the location of their house.
The other big problem: poll workers. There’s already a routine shortage of volunteers at polling places, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. During the 2016 elections, for instance, nearly 65 percent of jurisdictions reported difficulty arranging for a sufficient number of poll workers.
What’s more, the poll workers themselves are overwhelmingly part of the population most at risk for coronavirus complications. That same EAC survey collected age data on 53 percent of the poll workers who volunteered in 2016. Of that number, 32 percent were from 61 to 70 years old and another 24 percent were 71 or older. Numbers from China suggest that the risk of dying from coronavirus looks like a hockey stick — small for people under the age of 60, but shooting up fast after that. The death rate was 3.6 percent for people 60 to 69 years old, 8 percent for those in their 70s and 14.8 percent for people 80 and older. Death rates in Italy have followed a similar pattern.
So, what to do? Volunteers should be given gloves, Scarpino told me. They should stay home if they have any symptoms of sickness at all. And with all the contact they’re likely to have with hundreds of people — some of whom have to be assumed to be sick — he thought poll workers fell into a category in which it would be a good idea for them to wear a mask. (In the U.S., public health officials have recommended that only sick people, or healthy people caring for the sick, wear masks — largely to ensure there are enough masks available for healthcare workers.)
But one big thing individuals can do to make primaries safer right now is change the age demographics of who works them. “If you’re in your 20s or 30s, maybe you go volunteer at polling locations and let the retirees stay home,” Scarpino said.
Any state that is going to go ahead with a primary at this point is grossly irresponsible. No matter how bad Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment want to get this over with the states should wait.
This does me No Good at all.
Mom’s not leaving a dime behind.
Pencils, door handles and touch screens are all Corona-Safe for older people.
Postpone the election. Do you know any democrats who are dying to vote for Joe?
What about the recipes?
I’ve been listening carefully to all the news,
so I know that when I climb out of my bunker
in a month, I’ll be one of the only people still
alive on the planet.
Then I’ll have about 10 years to myself until
global warming finishes me off.
/s
If this Covid-19 situation continues more than a few months, look to have the Dems start pushing online internet voting as the only ‘reasonable’ way to vote.
Of course since there is absolutely no way to guarantee that the vote you submit from your computer or phone will be the same as the vote that arrives at whatever computer is doing the counting, the Dems will be very much in favor of this.
Since the Dems can get 110% of the eligible votes in some counties using today’s technology, imagine what they can do with online voting.
I can see it now ... Biden/Abrams win the 2020 election with 365mm votes cast. All electronic votes were certified to be accurate. The fact that the total vote count exceeds the population of the USA is never mentioned.
Gutfeld just said that as an alternative to toilet paper, you can use the NY Times.
Saw that. He’s wound up today.
Goals of Government in dealing COVID-19. Eliminate cash, make all voting electronic. (Add your own)
I didn't see any older person, however, everyone else there did.
[Yeh lets just cancel the election.]
Interesting interview several years ago on the Sid Roth show with Glenda Jackson. Did she see the 2020 election???
EXCERPT...
SID: Glenda, there’s time slipping away. What has God shown you that will happen in the future?
GLENDA: He showed me that if Christians don’t start praying more than they ever have, even the churches, become the house of prayer, this next election.
SID: Presidential election.
GLENDA: Election is not going to take place. That it’s going to be suspended because evil is going to arise and some disasters are going to happen, and some things are going to be put in place, and the president is not going to be removed. He’s going to stay in. And these things are going to happen, and they’re going to be very bad if we don’t get a hold of God.
SID: What other things is he showing you?
GLENDA: He’s showing me that the church has got to get back to prayer. Prayer is the power he gave the church. And we got to get the faith of God. Paul said, “Do we have God faith or have we taught man’s wisdom faith?” It’s what He said in Corinthians. And He said, “I come and I showed in the demonstration of the power of God my faith, it’s God’s faith.” We got to get back that faith.
I’m beginning to believe the Chinese Communist leadership is in cahoots with USA Democrats, George Soros, and Democrat investors in the USA. You figure it out!!! The pieces come together. China does not like our POTUS, Donald J. Trump. Why...because Trump runs circles around the Chinese leadership.
They loved Obama/Biden...they got everything they wanted...American jobs, sweetheart trade deals, No military opposition whatsoever, could do whatever they wanted...not so...with Trumpie!!! Shucks what’s a few Chinese lives, if the loss of innocent life” takes down Trump, the USA Stock Market, and the USA Mega world leader!!! Desperate people do desperate things and, both the Chinese (PRC) and Democrats are desperate from A-Z!!!
I called my 20 year old son. He moved away for a job and lives in my Mother in Law’s basement. No really he’s employed and making good money.
I told him to help Grandma out with shopping and stuff. She’s old and has COPD, so definitely in the risk group.
He told me that she was out all day counting ballots.
OK, never mind.
This seems to be a hit piece...beware the propaganda...No one has done as much as our President DJT, in a first term for country and citizens and not one politician will i.e. they are beholden to those that fund them. Look at the billionaires who have tried to take a stand against this POTUS...they are all so unqualified...President Trump is the real deal, All American.
The article is not about President Trump--it doesn't even mention him. How is it a "hit piece"?
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