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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

How to Hold an Election During a Pandemic

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsens, the United States might have to figure out how to hold an election in a time of social distancing. Will local, state and federal officials be able coordinate in time to transform our election infrastructure? Guest: Nate Persily, Stanford University Law Professor Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

If you ask Nate personally to describe his job, he does the usual thing I could

0:09.6

demx do. So I'm a law professor at Stanford. I'm also a director of the

0:14.8

Stanford Cyber Policy Center, but he gives you the full resume. He works in

0:19.6

voting rights, campaign finance, and then he gets to the good stuff. I'm often

0:24.6

appointed by courts in particular to resolve redistricting controversies. Yeah,

0:29.0

you get this cool title like special master a lot of the time, right? That's

0:34.6

true. I'd been a special master on several occasions. It's not a title that

0:40.7

wins many credibility at home, but it's definitely something that is not a

0:46.2

title you get in your normal course of things. You know, I describe you when

0:50.6

I'm if I had to describe what you do, I describe you as the election plumber,

0:54.5

like the guy who goes into states with broken electoral systems, and like tries to

1:00.9

figure out what pipe is leaking. That's good. Yes. I'll use that. I wanted to

1:07.2

call up the election plumber because as coronavirus spreads across the country,

1:11.7

there's this one question I just keep asking myself. How are we also supposed to

1:16.8

vote for president in a few months? A week ago, Nate was watching as primary

1:26.5

voting stalled out in Ohio after the governor ended up in a legal tug of

1:30.7

war. Jake, while you're there, will people be able to vote tomorrow? Tony, the

1:34.9

short answer to that is no. Within the past. Ohio's health commissioner had to

1:39.2

weigh in at the last minute, make the final call. Now, some election workers say

1:43.8

they got a robo call two minutes before they were scheduled to report to their

1:47.7

voting location to set things up tonight. And that was that seven. You know, in

1:52.0

this moment, everyone's focused on the people's health on the economy. And I

...

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