2020 election: How the face mask debate is extending to polling stations

When Elizabeth Cooper walked into her neighbourhood community centre in central Houston to cast her ballot, she was impressed.

Each poll worker sat at an individual table, spaced far apart and shielded by plexiglass. One handed Ms Cooper a wipe and a finger covering. Most important, she said of her experience, "everyone had a mask on".

Not so in the West Texas town of Big Spring on the day Rebecca Paige Evers voted at the county courthouse. She said she and her husband were the only ones masked.

"Honestly, it just did not feel like a safe environment to vote," Ms Evers said.

A voter's personal experience casting a ballot has long been shaped by decisions of local elections officials, who control many of the ground rules and allocate resources for voting operations. Now, as historic numbers of Americans cast early ballots for the 2020 presidential election in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century, they're encountering disparate policies on masks too.

The issue of wearing masks, particularly indoors where public health officials have said they are crucial to reducing coronavirus transmissions, is adding another flash point to arguments about balancing individual rights and safeguarding public health.

Elections officials are used to dealing with emergencies such as bomb scares or power outages, said Charles Stewart, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. What's different about this emergency, he said, is both its national scale and the way precautions — and masks in particular — have become so politicised. In this case, he said, "some people are willing to take emergency measures, and other people aren't".

For Mi Familia Vota, a national advocacy group that organises Latino voters, pressuring states and localities to require mask wearing at the polls is a top priority, said Héctor Sánchez Barba, executive director and CEO.

"I would call it a form of voter intimidation if you don't have people wearing masks, especially when our community has been so drastically affected," Mr Sánchez Barba said.

In July, Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered residents to wear face coverings in most public places. But he exempted polling stations, as did other states with such mandates, including Michigan and Wisconsin.

Mi Familia Vota and the Texas NAACP sued Mr Abbott, a Republican, over the order, saying it put black and Latino voters, whose communities have been hit hard by the virus, at a disadvantage as they weighed going into polling places.

The groups won a brief victory when a federal judge ruled in their favour and said masks should be required at polling stations. But the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit last week overruled the lower court, making masks again optional at Texas polls, as Mr Abbott's order had laid out.

Some counties continue to require poll workers to wear masks under county rules that require them for all county employees. Two large counties led by Democrats — Dallas County and Harris County, home to Houston — have taken that position.

After Dallas County fired five poll workers in October who refused to wear masks, the workers filed a lawsuit, alleging that the county was "jeopardising the integrity of the election site" and ignoring state law. The Texas Supreme Court declined to hear the suit.

In Republican-led Howard County, which includes Big Spring, elections director Jodi Duck said she hired three crews of 30 to 35 people each to run the polls this year, because so many have quit due to fears of the virus. Yet, if she required poll workers to mask up, Ms Duck said, she wouldn't have enough workers.

"We left it up to each to make up their own mind," Ms Duck said, adding that she's seen about half of voters and half of poll workers wearing them.

Wisconsin also has a statewide mask mandate, but its Elections Commission has said it cannot apply to voters, while leaving it up to local election administrators to decide whether poll workers must wear masks. Delegating that to local officials means the decision on what voters will experience rests with more than 1,800 local municipalities.

Jay Heck, director of the voter-rights group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said fear of the virus is a huge issue heading into Election Day because coronavirus cases are spiking to an average of 4,500 new diagnoses a day in the state.

Donald Trump's campaigning there has drawn large crowds recently.

"Trump and Pence have been coming continually, and their rallies are all not requiring people to wear masks," he said. "[People might say,] 'Hey, if it's okay to go see the president and vice president and not wear a mask, why should I have to wear one if I'm going to vote?' That's caused a lot of concern."

Mr Trump has often flouted mask requirements and questioned their effectiveness, deriding his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, for wearing one.

In Ohio, which suspended in-person voting during its March primary because of the pandemic, state officials said they have worked for months to try to ensure that the virus does not interfere with the general election.

Secretary of state Frank LaRose said that his office has a 61-point checklist of safety measures to try to mitigate the spread at the polls, including wiping down surfaces, social distancing and one-way lines.

There also is a requirement that Ohio poll workers wear masks or face shields. But the plan says that voters who refuse to wear a mask at the polls should be given the option to vote curb side and that if they decline, they must be allowed to vote, the plan says.

Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said no county has had a problem procuring a polling place that satisfies the safety checklist. In the wake of the virus, some counties moved polling places from facilities such as nursing homes and into schools, which he said provide a much better venue for measures such as social distancing.

Not all election administrators have had the same luck. Hilary Carter was disturbed when she got inside the city-county government building in Indianapolis on 14 October after waiting in line for about two-and-a-half hours. It was the only location available to voters in Marion County during the first few days of early voting.

"It was just super tight. You were always basically within two feet of somebody," said Ms Carter, an affordable-housing consultant who has Type 1 diabetes, which puts her at greater risk of complications should she contract the virus. "Indianapolis is a sprawling city. And you're bringing in people from all over, you were consolidating all voting into a single location."

Five more sites were later added by the county.

Russell Hollis, deputy director of the Marion County clerk's office, said the county has traditionally opened one voting centre for the first week of early voting. This year, the centre was overwhelmed by unexpectedly high turnout.

"I admit there were times when it was very crowded inside the polling station and inside the voting space. It was very difficult at times to properly socially distance," he said.

Mr Stewart said the injection of the debate over masks into election administration highlights the advantages and disadvantages of America's decentralised election system.

If there was a single authority that could mandate mask wearing and other virus-mitigation measures at polling booths across the United States, that might be a clear win for public health, Mr Stewart said. Yet if that authority were to make a different choice, local communities could still decide for themselves, as they're doing now.

In Florida, some elected officials in the Democratic stronghold of Broward County wanted voters to be turned away from the polls if they flouted the county's order requiring masks in public. "Again, all law enforcement agencies in Broward, PLEASE ENFORCE THE LAW .... no mask, no vote is the only enforcement!!!" state senator Gary Farmer, a Democrat who represents part of the county, tweeted on 19 October.

The appointed Republican elections supervisor, Peter Antonacci, said he could not bar eligible voters from the polls. But he did grant the county sheriff the authority to remove any "disruptive and unruly" people from polling sites, including those not wearing masks.

All precinct workers in the county have masks, shields, gloves and disposable pens, and a full-time janitor is staffing every polling place, said a spokesman for the county's elections office, Steve Vancore. The county also bought 500,000 masks to offer voters who show up without a face covering.

"We lawfully cannot deny someone the right to vote if they insist on not wearing a mask, but we can nudge, cajole, plead and clear out the area for those who insist on violating the county ordinance," Mr Vancore said. "On the extremely rare condition this happens and the person is disruptive, we can and will call the police."

The Washington Post