Free Speech For People applauds Senators Klobuchar and Wyden and their colleagues for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by proposing reasonable, appropriate, and commonsense provisions to ensure the United States will be able to hold free and fair elections while protecting voters, poll workers, and election officials during this crisis.

The U.S. election structure is facing unprecedented challenges and extraordinary difficulties. While Free Speech For People shares concerns with other civil rights organizations and election security experts that vote-by-mail introduces new equal access issues, security vulnerabilities, and election administration challenges, under these extraordinary circumstances, the provisions in the “Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020” (NEDBA) offer a reasonable and effective path to ensure the United States can continue to carry out our constitutional and fundamental democratic commitment to government by the people, determined by free and fair elections. These provisions include requiring that all states also implement early voting to help ensure that voters who seek to or need to vote in person can do so in a safe and accessible way.

We support the passage of the National Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020 and call on Congress to pass this bill without delay so that our state and local election officials can immediately begin plans to implement its vital provisions for the November 2020 general election.