By Amanda Zoch
During this pandemic, we hear a lot of talk about healthy people, healthy practices, even healthy democracy. So what about healthy elections?
The Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project was launched to “ensure that the 2020 election can proceed with integrity, safety, and equal access,” and they’ve recently released several new tools and resources to bolster the all-around health of our nation’s elections.
Some notable items include the Healthy Polling Places Guidebook, which provides advice for how to keep employees, poll workers, observers and voters safe during in-person voting; and Working Elections During COVID-19, a poll worker training module designed to supplement existing training. The project has even more tools and videos on Designing Healthy Polling and Voting.
As these resources show, election experts are laser-focused on Nov. 3. And for this month’s edition of The Canvass, we reached out to a number of additional election experts and asked them to share what’s on their minds as we head into the final weeks of election season. While some are thinking about poll workers and polling places, others are preoccupied with security, voter registration, ballot processing, the role of the legislature vis-a-vis the executive branch, voter confidence and more.
We hope you’ll take some time to see what they have to say.
The newest Canvass also includes an interview with Washington, D.C., Councilmember Charles Allen (D), messages to help constituents vote and other election news highlights.
Read the full October issue; better yet, subscribe.
Amanda Zoch is a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and policy specialist in NCSL's Elections & Redistricting Program.
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