Electable Pandemics

By Brianna Devlin

The current 2020 election cycle has been hit by a unique global crisis that has already begun to affect the ongoing election cycle and campaigns. Despite being a unique election affected by a global pandemic, it’s not an entirely unprecedented one, with many people drawing comparisons to previous world pandemics including the 1918 Spanish Flu. These first few months of 2020 have easily started to reflect one of the most globally devastating events of the first half of the 20th century not related to war. Similarly to our current global pandemic and election cycle, the United States was in the midst of a midterm election cycle during the 1918 Spanish Flu, a global health crisis with an alarmingly comparable death rate as the current COVID-19 crisis.

In the current election, safety and health concerns have justifiably run rampant while safety precautions have continued to increase with required social distancing and indefinitely extended stay at home orders. The caution placed around these preventive measures has lead to the closure of many business and social gathering sites, public and private. This has a damaging effect on the election process and has a discouraging effect on the due process of the right to vote. A few states were able to hold their primaries before the United States started to take a serious and critical approach to COVID-19, but many states’ primaries dates have been affected by quarantine procedures that inhibit the ability for polling sites to safely operate in-person voting. As reported for a New York Times article published on April 17[1], 16 states have already postponed their primary election date, with many other states switching entirely to vote-by-mail, due to the violations of health and safety guidelines that would occur at polling places. This sets a precedent of concern for the upcoming November elections, where political scientists are urging government officials to change the format of current voting procedures to encourage a fair and responsible election. These political scientists are suggesting that government officials need to improve the policies surrounding early voting and that the government should offer a vote-by-mail option to every voter in the United States in order to boost voting numbers during a pandemic.

The current pandemic is not the first major event to impede daily life, political elections, or government proceedings, and it certainly won’t be the last, but it is a long-term and uncertain interruption on familiarity in which newer and younger generations haven’t seen or experienced on a global scale. During previous election seasons, polling times and dates were adjustable in the occurrence of tumultuous events, local or global. Polling hours were extended in Tennesse when a tornado struck on the day of the state primary, and when the attacks on 9/11 occurred on New York’s primary election day, the election was postponed for two weeks.[2] The midterm elections during the Spanish Flu pandemic provides a closer experience to our COVID-19 pandemic as long-term and unknown global consequences caused by the deathly pandemics creates uncertainty across the world.

In 1918, many health and safety precautions that are similar to our current health and safety precautions were put in place. Many states and cities created quarantine procedures, with various levels of safe distancing standards, while many states put temporary bans and shutdowns on business and social gatherings, quite similar to the current quarantine procedures. Despite all the health and safety precautions that were in place in 1918, states lifted their state-wide ban on public gatherings to allow politicians to campaign for a few days leading up to the day the polls opened, where the lift of quarantine for the elections lead to a spike in Spanish Flu related infections and deaths. Regarding the relation between the lift of quarantine to encourage voting and flu-related deaths, Dr. Kristin Watkins expressed that “the political machine”[3] had disregarded the health and safety of their citizens.

With concerns of the impact of lifting quarantine for the purpose of voting, there are questions on how the procedures of the general election in November will run as the current election cycle continues. In an ideal world, our government would be able to utilize modern technologies to safely organize and conduct an election in which the health of citizens won’t be comprimised while they exercise their right to vote. Modernized transportation and postal systems, more advanced medical care, and even the internet, are 21st century advantages that should be taken advantage of during this election cycle to safely provide accessible elections, if only our government could figure out how to come together to do so.

Corasaniti, Nick and Stephanie Saul. “16 States Have Postponed Their Primaries Because of Coronavirus. Here’s a List.” The New York Times, April 17, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/article/2020-campaign-primary-calendar-coronavirus.html

Searcey, Dionne. “The Lessons of the Election of 1918.” The New York Times, March 21, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/us/politics/1918-flu-pandemic-elections.html

Watkins, Kristin. “It Came Across the Plains: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Rural Nebraska.” PhD diss., University of Nebraska Medical Center, 2015.

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[1] Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul, “16 States Have Postponed Their Primaries Because of Coronavirus. Here’s a List,” The New York Times, April 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/article/2020-campaign-primary-calendar-coronavirus.html.

[2] Dionne Searcey, “The Lessons of the Election of 1918,” The New York Times, March 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/us/politics/1918-flu-pandemic-elections.html.

[3] Kristin Watkins, “It Came Across the Plains: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Rural Nebraska” (PhD diss., University of Nebraska Medical Center, 2015), 35.