Just How Safe Is Voting In Person?
The pandemic has turned voting from a dull-if-important civic duty into a potentially risky activity. But exactly how risky is it?
I can’t tell you. Nobody can, in fact. One of the difficulties of COVID-19, in general, is that quantifying the risks of specific activities is more an art than a science. We know some of the basics: Outdoors is safer than indoors, smaller groups are safer than larger, wearing a mask is safer than not. But applying that to actual activities is complicated by the nuance of culture, social norms and individual choice. For example: The risk level of dining outdoors with friends is different at a picnic in New England than at a summertime barbecue in Texas.
The same sort of challenges affect attempts to assess the safety of voting. Even the variable most likely to make a difference -- whether you can wait outdoors -- may be entirely out of your control. Our best advice if you haven’t already voted: Wear a mask, do what you can to avoid peak crowd times and stake out some distance between yourself and other people in line. Maybe time to get creative with a fun and practical distancing device?