This column has been full of COVID-19 analysis over the last couple of months. As academics, it is sort of in our nature to want to analyze something from every possible angle, so forgive us this preoccupation. But, as I promised in an earlier column of mine, I wanted to start thinking about this year’s Presidential election and the electoral politics surrounding it – some perspectives on the history, data, and political machinations taking place.
Presently, we are facing a very uncertain autumn and an unusual election season. Many people are turning to previous pandemics for guidance or lessons learned. While the details of those pandemics, like any historical event, have gotten a bit muddled, ultimately, they can offer some insights as to how we might approach our own lives right now. This week, I want to look at the 1918 midterm elections and how the United States pulled it off in the midst of one of the deadliest pandemics in history.
The first relatively mild wave of the flu swept in during the spring of 1918 followed by a second stronger wave that emerged in September. In the month of October, 195,000 Americans perished from the flu. But, what was going on other than the pandemic at the time? Politically, Woodrow Wilson was in an unenviable position. He and his fellow Democrats were attempting to keep control of Congress in the thick of World War I. In at least eight states, alcohol prohibition was on the ballot and suffragists were trying to build on the momentum of the first twelve states they had won to date. The stakes were high not only for national candidates, but also for state politics. So, how do you implement the Constitutional duty of holding elections during such rough waters for the nation?
Just like the 2020 election season, campaigning had to be planned with strict social distancing and quarantine rules in place. This meant there could be no rallies and campaigning had to take place via alternative communication methods like newspapers and campaign literature. Today, of course, we have widespread television and internet media, which offers rapid distribution of information and tremendous opportunity for both diverse opinions and the spread of misinformation. While plenty of conspiracy theories have popped up during COVID-19, even then some candidates suggested that public health officials were conspiring to limit election turnout calling it a “Republican quarantine against Democratic campaign speeches” (see New York Times Oct. 22, 1918).
Voting, of course, is another issue. Under the purview of local and state governments, the 1918 midterms looked quite different depending on where you lived in the US. Voting ranged from closed polls to strict social distancing guidelines to mandatory mask-wearing. There was no discussion of postponing the election. The result of these measures was a significant drop in voter turnout. One analyst in the Election Law Journal suggested that when controlling for loss of potential voters due to WWI deaths, the flu accounted for a 10% drop in voting with approximately 40% total voter turnout. Six days after the election, the armistice ended WWI, people took to the streets to celebrate, and a new surge if flu cases was reported across the country.
A democracy is only as strong as its participation. That is the definition of democracy: by the people. The job of our state election boards, therefore, will be to ensure that turnout does not suffer in the same way it did during the 1918 pandemic.
One way to allow people to stay home and still vote is mail-in ballots. Interestingly, while I was doing research for this article, I came across no evidence of mail-in voting in 1918. It seems this practice did not emerge until the 1980s. This is currently a political hot-topic, so I wanted to address it here. Statistically, voter fraud in the case of mail-in ballots is quite low and participation is high. I know you’ve heard otherwise, but the data simply do not support the idea that mail-in ballots will lead to rampant voter fraud. There are five states that currently do all mail-in voting and there is no evidence in these states of statistically significant fraud. This is likely due to their best practices: voter signature, signature matching, laws limiting ballot harvesting, and ballot tracking via bar code. Additionally, a 1996-2018 study by Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research found that the partisan effect (ie. does mail-in voting help one party or another) was neutral but that overall average turnout rate increased modestly.
If COVID 19 threatens a possible 10% drop in turnout as it did during the 1918 pandemic, I would argue that even a modest increase in participation would be worth pursuing. Mail-in voting is one option, but election officials will have to consider a range of options to ensure the process is open and accessible to all eligible voters while maintaining public health and safety.
Dr. Heather Farley is a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia and Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Public Policy & Management. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
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