One of the many election problems with Covid lock downs

Politico: GOP voter registrations outpace Dems

Late last month, the Democratic data firm TargetSmart found that while new voter registrations had plummeted amid the coronavirus pandemic, those who were registering in competitive states tended to be whiter, older and less Democratic than before.

 

When he saw the numbers, Ben Wessel, executive director of NextGen America, said he "got nervous," and other Democratic-leaning groups felt the same.

The report seemed to confirm what state elections officials and voter registration groups had been seeing in the field for weeks: Neither Democrats nor Republicans had been registering many voters during the pandemic. But Democrats were suffering disproportionately from the slowdown.

So how many of us have been stopped in previous election years on the street by some teenager environmentalist asking us to register to vote? How many of us have been stopped on the street by some teenage pro-choicer asking us to register to vote?

I am stopped in downtown St Paul an average of once or twice every time I leave the building during an election year. Generally by someone associated with Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, or some other liberal advocacy group. Don't recall the last time (or if I ever was) stopped on the street by a conservative asking me to register.

The reality is that Democrats are much more tied to and engaged in this sort of personal attempts to register people, either standing on pedestrian busy street corners or going door to door. This won't happen and will severely dampen new voter registration for 2020.

You know what else will suffer? The new California laws regarding ballot harvesting, not to mention the illegal ballot harvesting that is known to be done by liberals in pretty much all fifty states. No more liberal activists showing up a nursing home and asking to "help" people fill out their ballots and make sure they get turned in. No more packing a bunch of people into buses and bringing them down to vote.

So this is a new election situation in 2020. While some are attempting to make it easier to vote by mail, nobody knows how much that will help (if much at all).  You are still looking at a two step process for many, having to first register, then vote in a separate filing. So many things to go wrong, and so many people who will not get it done. The fact is that if we are still in a Covid scare come November it will be harder to vote pretty much in all 50 states, and for the first time in a long time, we could actually see a decrease in turnout.

More to the point, those most fearful and less likely to brave the lines are lining up to be the timid and scared liberals. Conservatives (not liberals) are the ones wanting to go out in public, not caring much about social distancing or wearing masks. It won't be a hassle or a problem for them to go to the polls on election day.