Democrats in Congress are hoping to rectify what they call an error in the $2 trillion COVID-19 aid package that makes essential election funding inaccessible to some states and a headache to procure for others.
The race to the presidential elections are well underway, and states now have less than six months to completely revamp long-used voting processes and systems to protect their citizens in the wake of an unprecedented and deadly global pandemic. But things like vote-by-mail initiatives and personal protective equipment for poll workers are expensive, and these costs come alongside rapidly falling local revenues due to the COVID-19 shutdown.
Congress stepped in to help by including $400 million for election security funding for states in the March CARES act. But the money didn’t come for free: In order to receive the additional funding, states have to match 20%. Some officials say the match rate is onerous, if not impossible, to meet.
Today, Congressman Joe Neguse (D-CO) will introduce the Secure Our Elections Act, which retroactively removes the 20% match requirement. He hopes this will be added to the next stimulus bill, which house Democrats are currently finalizing their version of.
“States shouldn’t have to choose between cutting Medicaid or other important social safety net programs and preserving the security of their state elections,” said Neguse in an exclusive interview with Fortune. “That’s unconscionable, and Congress should remove that obstacle.”
State budgets are strapped in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Some states face difficulties scrounging up the millions of dollars required to match the funding. Others require legislative approval to make the match—a problem considering that more than half of state legislatures have already adjourned for the year.
“Every state has a different budget process and a different legislative calendar and cycle dictated by their constitutions,” said Neguse. “To put $400 million of election security funds at risk because of the inability of some states to be able to develop the 20% in matching funds to access the federal grant is a problem that does not need to actually occur, and it’s one that we could easily prevent for a very small cost and doing that makes a lot of common sense.”
State leaders are struggling to find the money they need and are being forced to cut essential funding in other areas of their budgets in order to scrape their match together.
“As it currently stands, my office needs to find a $1.33 million match in order to draw down our federal funds and these critical dollars are just vital to be able to be able to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of Colorado is going to have to drastically slash our budget and we’ll be forced to take money out of our own budget away from programs to put it towards the match” said Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold. “In other states some legislatures aren’t in session either, and some states will have a really hard time drawing down funds because of how their offices are funded when we’re seeing just massive slashes to state budgets.”
Ricky Hatch, a representative for the National Association of Counties and clerk auditor in Weber County, Utah, previously told Fortune that his state will likely only claim half of the election security funds made available because of the matching requirement. “The governor’s office came to us and said, ‘We just don’t think we can ask the legislature for that 20% match,’” he said.
Previous grants offered to states through the Help America Vote Act, signed into law by George W. Bush, had match rates of just 5%. Neguse expressed confusion about why this particular match was much higher, given that private companies receiving stimulus funding had no match rate.
Still, critics argue that the federal government is being quite generous in extending 80% of funding to states.
“A 20% match is low. Federal programs typically have 50% match rates,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. “Elections are extremely important, and state leaders themselves know that and will fund them and take care of that, I don’t think the federal government has to push them to.” A few million dollars, he argued, is not a large amount of money for states like California which have $150 billion budgets.
California is currently facing a $54.3 billion budget deficit, largely due to COVID-19 business closures, according to Governor Gavin Newsom. In a press conference this week, he said the state had to brace for Depression-era revenue.
“Two trillion dollars were just pushed into the economy, and if the federal government is able to give that out to some of the biggest businesses who arguably have great lines of credit and money in the bank then they should be able to support the most important thing in our nation and that’s our democracy and freedom to vote,” Griswold said.
Secretaries of state are calling for more election funding. A recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice found that in five states—Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Missouri—the current funding will amount to an average of just 20% of required costs for necessary election changes, but Neguse said his bill is an immediate stopgap measure that won’t cost the Federal government any additional money.
“The reality is that elections systems around the country are dramatically underfunded,” Griswold said. “They are not as prepared are they could be to be able to execute elections during a healthcare crisis, and we need to invest in that. Americans need to exercise their fundamental rights even during a healthcare crisis, and they should never have to choose between their health and casting a ballot.”
Neguse said he has spoken to both Democratic and Republican colleagues about his bill, and he’s optimistic that it will be included in the next stimulus package.
“This is a homeland security issue. This is ensuring safety in our elections by investing the necessary resources into technology and the corresponding needs of our secretaries of states across the country,” he said. “This is a common sense statutory fix that will ensure our elections are safer.”
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