If a comparable disaster in November deprives well-meaning voters of their chance to be heard – or worse, gives bad faith supporters an excuse to undermine the credibility of the vote – then the media will bear some of the blame.
As it stands, journalists are not paying enough attention to this huge story before their eyes. Instead, news organizations are obsessed, as always, with coverage of horse racing.
Political journalists scrutinize each opinion poll as if it were the I Ching. Cable experts don’t care about the potential impact of the candidates’ latest blunders, despite their notorious ignorance of such forecasts.
What does not obsess them, unfortunately, is the heart of election day: the vote itself.
But, said Hasen, it must happen now, not in September or October, when it is too late.
If journalists put their spotlight on potential problems, Hasen told me, they can help prevent “situations where the losers do not accept the results as legitimate”.
They can do this by reporting stories that put pressure on local and state officials to take corrective action.
There is no shortage of potential targets for journalists: defective equipment, insufficient or poorly managed polling stations, unjust or discriminatory voter registration, and defective recount methods.
Many experts are convinced that the benchmark method of voting is the old-style hand-marked ballot, which Hasen calls “the least hackable and the most auditable”. But, as Sue Halpern wrote in the New Yorker last year, sellers of fanciful new voting systems have been aggressive in their efforts to sell municipalities on their often opaque products.
Despite all this rich reporting, few press organizations have devoted themselves to an in-depth examination.
Yes, there is a lot of attention when there is a problem, like in Iowa or Super Tuesday. But overall, coverage tends to be haphazard, after the fact, and not focused enough on deeper issues such as pressures and incentives for governments to invest in new, unproven voting machines.
I do not accept the argument that the newsroom resources are insufficient. After all, almost all newsrooms have at least political journalists. And they often operate in packets, producing scoop-oriented coverage that is not much different from their peers in other networks or newspapers.
But there are very few specialists in the rhythm of voting. Pam Fessler at NPR and Ari Berman at Mother Jones occupy an important place among this rare group. Some large press companies, including the Washington Post, are also increasing their coverage.
Berman often focuses on what has happened since 2013, when the Supreme Court struck at the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He reported that the long queues for Super Tuesday go directly back to the decision of the High Court that states no longer need federal approval to close polling stations. This has allowed Texas alone to close more than 600 polling stations in recent years.
“This has disproportionately hurt democratic and minority voters, as 70% of the polling stations have been closed in the 50 counties of the state with the highest growth of black and Latino voters,” Berman said in a recent interview at Democracy Now.
The New York Times Nikole Hannah-Jones suggested that this trend is tantamount to a “voting tax” because these voters may have to give up a day’s pay to vote. And, of course, a high turnout – which should be a primary goal in a democracy – only lengthens the lines.
Hasen is also concerned with an even bigger problem: mechanical error, mixed with an error in human judgment.
“You are more likely to be disenfranchised by incompetence,” he said, “than by removing voters.” Iowa caucuses are one example; with these still obscure results, this amounted to “a failed election”.
No one should want that in November. A scenario in which President Trump is defeated at the polls but refuses to give up the oval office because he accuses the election of having been rigged? It doesn’t really test gullibility.
All the more reason for the press to redirect at least part of its attention from the drama of the latest poll numbers to something much more important. And to do it now when it matters most.
Shake up the vote? By all means.
But blanket vote first.
