It was a quiet Thursday afternoon when Christopher B. Mann, an Assistant Professor of Political Science, and I met screen-to-screen over a zoom call. If anything, the mode in which this unorthodox interview was taking place hinted at the bizarre times that COVID-19 has placed everyone in. The effects of the pandemic also stem into this year’s election process. The virus, combined with an array of variables, including a polarizing political divide, have made the 2020 Presidential Election incredibly extraordinary. Or, as Professor Mann puts it, “incredibly volatile,” marking it as one of the most unprecedented in recent history.
One of the more unique aspects of this election is the ages of the candidates from both major parties. In 2016, Trump became the oldest person to assume the presidency of the United States, with Joe Biden claiming that spot if he wins in November. As Professor Mann mentioned, with that age comes a checkered past. Biden’s long history in government caused him to develop ties with segregationists like Senator Strom Thurmond. “Should voters ask themselves whether they’re comfortable with someone who tried to find common ground on some policy areas despite Thurmond’s, or other overt segregationists, or even people that we now know were racists even if they were more covert about it? Yeah, very legitimate to question that.” On the other hand, Mann pointed out that, despite his past, Biden has moved on to work with legislators such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris. But, in the end, it’s up for each individual voter to decide.”His positions on other things, who he’s chosen to work with, and choosing to work with now, that’s something that each individual should judge.”
Despite his past, Biden’s campaign has focused on voters of color, even launching a national ad over the summer that was directly aimed at African Americans. After the release of the ad, a campaign spokesperson stated: “our robust paid media strategy, which will include the largest general election investment in African American paid media by a presidential campaign, will allow us to disseminate Vice President Biden’s policy proposals and targeted initiatives that speak directly to Black communities across the United States.”
According to Professor Mann, “it is clear that the winning coalition for Democrats includes mobilizing African Americans, Latinx, other communities of color,” and that one of the Biden campaign’s priorities is “doing a much better job than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 in some of those communities.”
However, despite Biden’s many initiatives, Black and Brown voters are some of the most disproportionately affected by voter suppression. Disenfranchisement laws have directly barred many voters, including 1 in 13 Black Americans. Professor Mann believes that the focus on race during this election is a sign of the times. “I think that the current environment has put voter disenfranchisement much more front and center in the Democratic policy agenda.The rhetoric and the actions of the Trump administration and Trump campaign around voting rights have moved this very much to a front burner issue from where it was before, in terms of policy action and enforcement.”
Despite the tension between Biden’s past and current campaign strategies, Professor Mann pointed out how the attacks on Biden haven’t seemed to work as well as the slanderous quips that Trump used on his previous opponents. “It’s been interesting,” Mann said, “because unlike those where he had these nicknames or labels that he put on people and seemed to get traction and the media repeated, he has not seemed to have found a line of attack that sticks against Joe Biden. We saw sleepy Joe for a while, but that just doesn’t seem to have resonated in the way that some of his other derogatory nicknames.”
However, as Professor Mann points out, Trump’s main challenge may be the fact that Biden’s problems mirror his own, and that his stereotypical onslaughts won’t have the same effect on a straight, white male. “You know, the biggest knock on him as a politician is precisely this sort of thing that Trump has tried to do about, his tendency to put his foot in his mouth and misspeak. But part of Trump’s problem is that the dimensions on which Biden might be weakest against another candidate, his age and the whole sleepy Joe attack, also apply to him. Trump is only three years younger and has had his own moments that the media has picked up on.”
“And a lot of the issues on which he might have attacked Biden are, which Biden got attacked about in the primaries, stem from Biden’s more conservative positions earlier in his career. But attacking Biden as being too moderate or too much towards the Republican position isn’t an effective attack. With Biden, that doesn’t work in the general election because the things that are Biden’s political weaknesses are not things that work to win over the voters that Trump wants, which I think has been part of the challenge. It’s also just much harder because Trump’s tendency is to play to various stereotypes and Biden is an old white guy. And that doesn’t drive the kinds of stereotypical attacks or labeling that he’s used so effectively against other politicians.”
Despite Tuesday’s debate covering a multitude of topics from the Black Lives Matter movement to Trump’s taxes, one notable issue that was missed was the meddling of foreign nations in the election. “It is alarming, the degree to which foreign powers, Russia, China, (…) or even domestic actors, can engage in potential misinformation,” said Mann. “This reflects our shift to social media, in which our information flow is curated by an algorithm that detects what we see.”
Professor Mann is also bothered by the shrinking of local media, a side effect of the public’s exodus towards social media for their news coverage. This has led to the polarizing of news outlets and created a problem for citizens who want to stay informed. Although he is unsure how the open ecosystems of social media could be regulated, he is also optimistic about the future, stating that “even if Trump is reelected, I think we will see more serious efforts to do something about this.” The decline of local media has also left the American public vulnerable to misinformation, as social media can be easily manipulated. This has been taken advantage of by several foreign nations who attempt to tamper with the election.
Although there is little doubt that foreign nations will have an effect on the election, the major question seems to be how the pandemic will affect voter turnout. According to Professor Mann, before the spread of COVID-19, the presidential election promised to show massive turnouts: “Both sides felt that there was an enormous amount at stake. I think the only reason that we will see something lower than (2008) (…) is the disruption of election administration due to the pandemic. People are concerned about going to vote based on how the shortage of poll workers due to health concerns, changing of polling places due to health concerns, we know all of those things will drive turnout lower. This is not about Biden and Trump necessarily; this is about the American public across the political spectrum having a really clear sense of what is at stake in this election.”
The virus has made Mann especially concerned about the seemingly partisan split on how to vote in this election. “The effect that mail-in ballots will have on the election is highly contingent on the status of the virus in thirty to forty days. In a presidential election in particular, all of the research indicates that although voting by mail is perceived by many people to be more convenient, it doesn’t have an appreciable impact on the partisan outcome. Now, that is not in an environment where the leader of one party is telling people not to do it and the leader of the other party is telling people to do it. It affects who shows up on Election Day, if we saw the kind of chaos that we saw in April in Wisconsin or even in some of the later summer primaries where polling places were closed or there was a shortage of poll workers, in person voters were deeply affected. The skew could have a big impact on the outcome. The Trump campaign has clearly decided it is not in their interest to mail either applications or ballots to all registered voters. This leads to turnout among people who are not favorable to Trump.” The higher amount of absentee ballot requests from Democrats may be one of Trump’s main reasons behind his attacks on absentee voting.
Despite the pandemic’s toll on in-person voter turnout and Donald Trump’s fearmongering, voter registration for mail-in ballots has skyrocketed. According to Professor Mann, Trump’s attempts at delegitimizing the election have been futile in some cases and have undermined the overall stance of the Republican Party on mail-in voting. When talking about the recent controversy regarding the defunding of Louis DeJoy’s Post Office, Professor Mann regarded the alleged attempts of voter suppression to be ineffective. “Even with the disruption from DeJoy, if every registered voter in America cast a mail ballot, that is just a little bit more mail than the Post Office moves every single day of the week. The volume of mail ballots seems like a really big, broad number, but the Post Office moves incredible amounts of mail,” said Mann. “I think the fact that we are having a national conversation about returning your ballots early will do much more ensuring that they get returned on time than the damage done to the Post Office. If there was, and I am unable to draw a conclusion about whether there was, but if there was an intention of disenfranchising people by slowing down the mail delivery, it has entirely backfired in that the conversation will change peoples’ behavior much more than any slight slow-down of the mail delivery will have.”
Mann sees Trump’s delegitimization of mail-ballot’s to be far more concerning to both the American public and the Republican Party. “The irony here is that until this election, mail ballots in many states were a big advantage to Republicans. Republicans were more likely to request them, more likely to return them, and less likely to have problems with them.” Professor Mann also brought up his relationship with Republican Secretary of State and advocate of mail ballots, Kim Liman, as an example of how “the logic of the Trump campaign is not the logic of the Republican Party.” According to Mann, this has left many observers confused and made many Republican operatives concerned that the messaging from the Trump campaign will “shoot themselves in the foot about getting their voters out, because if the virus goes bad and people have decided not to vote with mail-in ballots because Trump has told them not to, these voters may now not show up at all.” And in terms of Trumps’ claims about voter fraud, Mann just sees them as they really are: just wrong. “It is just vanishingly rare. An article that I assign when I teach my voting reform class and other classes is that people are more likely to report observing alien abductions than they are to report observing voter fraud.” Professor Mann sees Trump’s delegitimizations as both a fear mongering tactic and “a way for people to justify outcomes they don’t like.”
Another factor that may impact this election cycle’s overall turnout is voter motivation, and according to Professor Mann, these motivations reveal a deep divide both in American politics as a whole, as well as within the major political parties themselves. “Those who are supporting Trump are really motivated to vote for Trump, while those who are voting for Biden have less of a motivation to vote for Biden because their motivation is to vote against Trump, not for Biden,” stated Mann.
“I think Democrats are plenty motivated to overcome whatever hurdles there are to vote against Trump, but they may not be getting tattoos of Joe Biden the way that Trump supporters are metaphorically or literally willing to do that.”
Although Biden may not be the most charismatic candidate, the turnout of voters against Trump has made many wonder what would happen if Biden wins the election. “There seems to be a significant portion of the American public, probably somewhere between 20 and maybe 35% of the American public, that will so angered and outraged at a Joe Biden victory, or more specifically by a Donald Trump loss, that I can imagine protests that fill Washington with just as large crowds to protest a Biden presidency as we saw in the wake of Trump’s victory, with concerns and accusations of socialism taking over America and other rallying cries of the far right. There are, however, a large number of Republicans who, I think after a Biden victory will immediately return to winning the Presidency in 2024 for a Republican, but a very different kind of Republican than Donald Trump, as well as focusing on winning Congress, both the House and the Senate, state houses, and governorships for Republicans, but not Donald Trump style Republicans. That is, they prefer Joe Biden to Donald Trump because they want their party back from Donald Trump.”
However, Mann sees a major shift in politics no matter the result of the election. “One of the invisible dynamics is that no matter who wins, there is a reckoning coming in both parties. A reckoning over the future of the Republican Party, whether Trump wins or loses (…) and in the Democratic Party. Right now, the Democratic Party is united by the cause of defeating Donald Trump, but the fights that we saw in the Democratic primary are nowhere near settled. The day after inauguration, and probably well before the inauguration, there will be major factional fights that have been papered over the defeat of Trump that are very much alive within the Democratic Party.”
Inarguably, one of the greatest factors in this election will be the turnout of young people. The lack of millennials who voted in the 2016 election was arguably one of the major factors in Hillary Clinton’s loss. One response that many gave to why they didn’t vote was that their vote didn’t matter, and with many mail-in ballots that are rejected each election cycle, Professor Mann is worried that this may further the pessimistic outlook that young people have on elections. “Young people are more likely (...) to make the mistakes that lead to their ballots not being counted. People of color are more likely to have their ballots not counted because of some of these issues. So, am I concerned that this will feed into the perception that the system is rigged against those people? Yes, I am.”
Although mail ballots have real problems, Mann considers them to be essential in dealing with our current health crisis. And, there are many ways to avoid your vote being rejected. “Read the instructions very carefully. Almost all of the mistakes that lead to ballots being rejected are easily avoidable if you read the instructions carefully. And, to be fair, part of the problem here is not just first time mail ballot voters, but jurisdictions that haven’t paid much attention to having good materials or clear instructions because they have very few mail ballot voters and those who vote by mail tend to be experienced voters who know their way through it. But that said, some of the most common reasons that ballots are rejected are that they are late, so make sure you return it with plenty of time. Do not procrastinate, election officials will not give you an extension, so make sure there’s plenty of time. Remember to sign it, to date it, and to fill in any other information that is required as part of your mail ballot.”
Mann notes that those small details are what lead to the vast majority of ballot rejections. “Make sure you follow all those little things, even if they don’t make sense. Even if it seems unnecessary. Dotting those I’s and crossing those T’s are what is necessary to get your ballot counted, so don’t rush it and don’t leave it to the last minute, just follow the step by step instructions. Almost all the mistakes that lead to a ballot not being counted are mistakes that are easily avoided.” One of those avoidable mistakes is a notarized signature, which some states require for first time voters. “There are notaries at Skidmore who will notarize those ballots free of charge. So people should get in touch with Votemore, the student organization that will help them connect with one of those notaries and notarize their ballot.” No matter who you chose to vote for in the upcoming election, your vote should matter. If you choose to vote by mail, make sure to be careful and read the instructions. If you choose to vote in person, make sure to be socially distanced and stay safe out there!