Democracy has not been spared the upheaval caused by the coronavirus. The Democrats decided to delay their national convention last week, while states that didn’t vote as early as California have been forced to postpone their primaries, conduct them by mail, or press ahead in circumstances that are hostile to participation. Now officials are debating pandemic-friendly procedures for choosing our next president in the fall.

It turns out that a deadly contagion is not conducive to the traditional exercise of politics and elections, which encompass such epidemiologically reckless practices as convening large gatherings, indiscriminately pressing flesh and sharing a sheet of “I voted” stickers. Even if the contagion is more controlled by November, some voters will be understandably reluctant to join their fellow Americans in a well-trafficked school gym or church basement to touch the same screens, buttons or levers.

An old technology that is already used in every state and mandated in a few is the obvious solution: voting by mail. The trouble is that too many of our elected leaders see the prospect of depressed turnout less as a problem than as an opportunity.

The $2 trillion stimulus bill originally passed by the House last month included $4 billion in election funding tied to a requirement that states provide absentee ballots to all registered voters and expand early voting, a reasonable goal even if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic. But negotiations with the Senate and the Trump administration reduced the funding by 90% and eliminated any requirement to ease remote and advance voting.

In explaining his opposition to the provision, President Trump warned Fox News that it could induce “levels of voting that if you ever agreed to, you would never have a Republican elected in this country again.” This was a classic Kinsley gaffe in that Trump had accidentally told the truth: He fears helping more people vote will hurt his and his party’s electoral prospects. A GOP legislative leader in Georgia made much the same mistake, opposing a fellow Republican’s proposal to send every voter an absentee ballot on the grounds that it would “certainly drive up turnout” and therefore be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rightly noted that the opposition to expanded voting by mail “raises so many other questions,” is pushing for more election spending in the next stimulus bill. California’s top elections official, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, said the funding provided “is, frankly, not enough ... to deliver elections that are safe for all voters, poll workers and elections personnel.”

California is in a better position to do so than most states, having already made voting early and by mail easy. Others, including most of the general election battlegrounds, maintain antiquated barriers to absentee voting that serve no purpose other than deterring turnout.

Oregon, Washington and a few other states have already implemented universal voting by mail, which would be a worthy but challenging goal for others to reach by November, especially if they haven’t laid the groundwork. But making absentee ballots universally available, accessible and acceptable shouldn’t be controversial or difficult, especially with more federal assistance. Under the circumstances, it’s the least states should do for their voters.

Voting by mail has a long and largely unremarkable history in states of all political complexions, so the notion that it amounts to a partisan scheme is specious. Opposing legitimate voter participation by mail or other means has always been cynical, but forcing people to brave the polls in a pandemic is dangerous, too.

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