Senate Republicans left out funding for mail-in and early voting during the COVID-19 pandemic in their stimulus bill rolled out Monday, prompting backlash from Democrats, election officials and advocacy groups.
With less than 100 days to go before Election Day, these officials are concerned that without a new injection of federal funds, state and local officials facing budget shortfalls may struggle to carry out safe and secure elections that ensure every American can vote.
The concerns come as the pandemic has upended the primary process, leading most states to postpone their contests, while results in a handful, including New York, have been delayed by a surge in mailed-in ballots.
“This isn’t in anyone’s budget, no one budgeted for a pandemic, and you can see state and local budgets are cratering, they don’t have funding to put into this, and certainly it’s going to be a challenge,” Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Chairman Benjamin Hovland, who was nominated by President Trump, told The Hill Tuesday.
The roughly $1 trillion stimulus proposal, announced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other top Republicans on Monday, did not include election funds for states, despite months of strong advocacy for the inclusion of these funds.
McConnell said during a press conference that he was concerned that including the funds would “federalize” elections, adding that Congress had previously appropriated election funds to states in other funding bills.
“We’ve provided plenty of financial assistance, but we are not going to tell them how to conduct their elections during the pandemic, or in my view, in the future either, so that’s why there is not additional money in there for election assistance,” McConnell told reporters.
Congress appropriated $400 million to states as part of the CARES Act stimulus bill signed into law by President Trump in March. These funds were in addition to over $800 million sent to states to boost election security as part of appropriations packages since 2018.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the chairman of the elections-focused Senate Rules Committee, told The Hill Tuesday that he was “open” to additional election funds being sent to states in the future, but also wanted to examine ways “to increase flexibility for states to use the current funding they have available.”
The House included $3.6 billion for elections in the Democratic-backed HEROES Act stimulus bill, which the Senate does not plan to consider after the House passed it along party lines in May.
Blunt told reporters separately Tuesday that while the proposed $3.6 billion was an “indefensible” amount, he could still be “in favor of adding some money” during the eventual stimulus package negotiations between the House and Senate.
“Putting a reasonable amount of money on the table compared to their $3.6 billion was probably not worth rolling out … [Democrats’] response would be that it was not nearly enough,” Blunt said. “We’re not going to get anywhere close to the number in the House bill, so why have another number out there that gets denigrated before you are serious about talking about it?”
The exclusion of the election funds prompted backlash from officials and voting rights groups over concerns that with states facing budget shortfalls due to the pandemic, the federal government needed to step in to ensure free and fair elections could take place this year.
New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice estimated earlier this year that states would need a total of $4 billion to address new challenges to elections such as training younger poll workers, purchasing sanitizing equipment and preparing for an influx of mail-in ballots.