(without catching a disease)

Starting this week election officials are supposed to start mailing out applications for early voting or vote-by-mail. With many counties facing shortages of poll workers and the voting public understandably cautious about physical proximity it only makes sense to vote by mail this time around.

Vote by mail has been shown to increase voter participation and increased voter participation tends to work against Republicans. Thus you get situations like Wisconsin where the Democratic governor tried to go to a postponed vote by mail system like many other states have done. Hours after he signed the order Republican legislators went to the state supreme court which, on a party line vote, quashed the order. Their primary goes on as usual, actually as unusual, April 7.

Hard to say where the epidemic will be in a month when it’s Nebraska’s turn. Even though the governor has not yet endorsed an all mail in system for this election at least everyone will get the opportunity to do just that. It’s up to us to get the applications returned on time, they’re due May 1. The ballots themselves are due at your county election office by the time the polls close on primary day which is May 12th.

Nebraska is an open primary state so if you are a non partisan you can request a nonpartisan, Democratic, Republican or Libertarian ballot . Greens won’t appear because we are not currently recognized by the state and have too few volunteers to get the petition signatures required for ballot status, if that was even possible with the social distancing protocols so necessary right now.

Be safe and Vote safely !