As COVID-19 infection rates soar across the country, Congress is running out of time to take further actions to protect us all. Our government must do more: Lives are at stake. Black and Brown communities are dying and being hospitalized at disproportionate rates, yet Congress continues to drag its feet on a meaningful relief package that protects the health and future of our country.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress can act to prevent further tragedy, and it must. The ACLU urges the Senate to take four key actions to protect marginalized communities and the most vulnerable people in our country:

1. Mandate and provide funding for no-excuse absentee mail-in voting and early voting; 
2. Expand early release for people in prisons and jails most vulnerable to COVID-19;
3. Provide funding for emergency rental assistance; and
4. Provide access to COVID-19 testing and treatment for everyone, regardless of immigration status.

These actions will save lives, prevent homelessness and broader economic devastation, and allow people to exercise their right to vote without sacrificing their health.

Protect our Health and our Democracy

Congress must set national standards for the 2020 elections so that no-excuse mail-in absentee voting and early voting are available to all voters. Expanding access to early voting and vote by mail will let voters avoid physical polling locations and minimize person-to-person contact, reducing their risk of contracting COVID-19 while voting. Without action, the problems we saw during the chaotic primaries in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin could repeat themselves on a national scale. Additionally, failing to expand mail-in voting and to provide safe in-person voting options would disenfranchise the very communities of color who have faced the worst forms of voter suppression and systemic racism throughout American history. Though officials from both parties have taken steps to expand voting access during the pandemic, Congress must mandate expanded voting access through the VoteSafe Act. Without a national framework guiding states and funding to actualize it, patchwork solutions will disenfranchise eligible voters and could increase COVID-19 infections.

Expand Early Release

It is also crucial for Congress to release those most vulnerable to COVID-19 from our nation’s prisons and jails. Despite expanded authority to reduce the federal prison population provided by the CARES Act, only 2 percent of the 150,000 people in Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody have been placed in home confinement since April. This inaction continues despite 95 deaths and over 8,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among incarcerated people and staff at BOP facilities. Over half of all 122 federal prisons have been impacted by the virus. Congress can fix this easily by including the Emergency Community Supervision Act in the next relief package, which would move pregnant people, those age 50 and older, and those with underlying health conditions in BOP custody into home confinement and other community supervision programs.

Emergency Rental Assistance

Even before the pandemic, 8 million households of America’s lowest-income renters struggled to pay rent. The situation is now far more dire: With lost income, reduced wages, and lost jobs, many are facing homelessness and eviction ⁠— both of which put people at even greater risk of infection. On average, Black women renters had evictions filed against them by landlords at double the rate of white renters in 17 out of 36 states, according to a study by the ACLU’s Womens’ Rights Project and Data Analytics team. By providing $100 billion in emergency rental assistance, Congress can prevent a wave of mass evictions that would throw millions into homelessness and could make our country more vulnerable to disease. 

Universal Access to Testing and Treatment

Finally, while infection rates are spiking nationwide, Congress failed to include tens of millions of people in access to testing and treatment — many of whom are essential workers, including immigrants. There are approximately 19.8 million “essential” immigrant workers, risking their lives under the constant threat of exposure. Leaving so many green card holders, DACA recipients, Temporary Protected Status holders, and other immigrants out of testing and treatment is cruel, inhumane, and flies in the face of public health experts’ recommendations. Additionally, nearly 70% of Americans believe that the federal government has an obligation to provide medical care to undocumented immigrants with COVID-19. Testing and treatment are essential to curbing the spread of COVID-19 — and until all of us are covered, all of us are at risk. Under the current circumstances, people are left to seek care at local community health centers — some of which do not have COVID-19 testing or are facing shortages — or to hope that their state will provide testing and treatment to those not covered by Congress’ relief packages. But these options are limited and lead to confusion about whether people are eligible for care or where to go to receive it. Congress must ensure that COVID-19 related care is available under emergency Medicaid in order to protect us all. 

The time to act is now: lives are on the line. Members of Congress, do your job.

Shayna Strom, Chief Deputy National Political Director, ACLU

COVID-19 highlighted the need for universal access to no-excuse vote by mail. For many voters with disabilities, vote by mail has always been the safest and most accessible way to cast a ballot, because it allows them to avoid the challenges of getting to the polls, waiting in line, and facing physical barriers at the polling place. While in-person polling places are required to be fully accessible, we still see violations such as lack of ramps or elevators, voting machines not properly set up, and facilities without adequate signage indicating accessible routes or parking. 

States must act now to enact universal, no-excuse vote by mail. Additionally, states must take steps to support accessibility, while also ensuring that safely voting in person remains an option. 

Below, we outline key steps to increase accessibility for voters with disabilities.

States should automatically send mail-in ballots to all registered voters, rather than maintaining a more complex “opt-in” system for voting by mail, where voters must request a ballot. But if it’s not possible to send ballots automatically, then the process for requesting a mail-in ballot should be quick and easy, and voters should be able to make these requests online or by phone. 

To further improve accessibility, states should ensure that all election websites comply with accessibility guidelines so that every voter can easily access voter registration, procedural guidelines, ballot applications, and information about candidates and ballot initiatives.

Voters with disabilities who would like to vote from the safety of their homes should be able to receive their ballots on an electronic interface, mark those ballots using the accessible technology they have at home, and then print out and mail their voted ballots. Electronic ballot marking allows voters with “print” disabilities (including those with visual impairments) to read and mark their ballot using the accessibility features on their personal devices. Commonly used assistive technologies include screen readers, digital magnifiers, and text-to-speech software. Several states, including Ohio, Maryland, and Oregon, have already made electronic ballot marking systems available for voting by mail. 

Electronic ballot marking is not equivalent to online voting. While an electronic ballot marking system allows voters to receive their ballots via an electronic interface, the voted ballots are not submitted electronically. Once completed, the ballots are printed out and mailed back to the local election office. Online voting, by contrast, would involve casting and submitting a completed ballot over the internet. Currently-available online voting options cannot guarantee a valid and secret vote. 

Signature match requirements present an additional barrier to voters who have conditions that make it hard to consistently sign their name. States should waive these requirements for voters with disabilities.   

In some states, people who vote by mail must get their ballot envelope notarized or provide a witness signature. While witness and notarization requirements present specific challenges for people with disabilities, they present even greater barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing guidelines currently restrict the ability of all voters — not just those with disabilities — to find a physically-present witness or notary. 

Election officials should undergo virtual training on how to assist voters with disabilities in navigating election websites and marking their ballots electronically. Election officials should also learn how to respectfully interact with voters with disabilities so they can provide helpful information and services without infringing on a voter with a disability’s right to a private, independent vote. All staff responding to election-related inquiries should be able to answer questions about accessible voting options. 

Preparing election officials for these tasks will help voters with disabilities have a dignified voting experience.

The reforms outlined here will have the most impact if voters are aware of the voting options and resources available to them. Election officials should inform all voters by contacting them directly through reasonably available methods such as mail, email, phone calls, and text messages. Local disability advocacy organizations should serve as key partners on election planning and disseminating voting-related information to people with disabilities. 

States must act now to ensure that all voters, including voters with disabilities, can vote safely in the age of COVID-19, and without unnecessary barriers or burdensome requirements. 

The vote by mail reforms we’re seeing in many states are efforts to improve accessibility during the pandemic. We should use the opportunity to improve accessibility for all voters, including voters with disabilities. Voting rights are disability rights.  

For more information on increasing accessibility for voters with disabilities  — and all voters — see our guide for election officials.

As people across the country ready themselves to celebrate America’s “independence,” there are few symbols more strongly associated with the holiday than flags. Flags have great meaning — particularly on July 4. This week, after decades of dispute and dialogue, Mississippi legislators finally voted to replace their state’s flag, which included what is known as the battle flag of northern Virginia. This was the flag flown by those defending white supremacy, and for some, it still is. The vote to remove the confederate iconography from the state flag raises important questions: Why was Mississippi the last state to remove such images from its flag — and why is this so significant?

If you asked Americans which state has the most racist history, many would likely say Mississippi. This ugly reputation is well deserved. According to its own secession statement, white people in the state had accumulated “four billions in money” from the practice of enslaving Black people. Jim Crow and segregation were everyday hallmarks in the lives of Mississippians. Sen. Theodore Bilbo, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate from 1935 to 1947, highlighted how critical white supremacy was in the lives of Mississippians when he called on “every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the niggers away from the polls — if you don’t understand what that means you are just plain dumb. You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting … you do it the night before the election.”

Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner are all names that shine a light on Mississippi’s history of white supremacy, violence, and hate. The University of Washington’s Lynching Violence Database documents 689 lynchings in Mississippi between 1877 and 1949 — the most of any American state. However, it was the modern-day lynching of George Floyd, broadcast across America, that sparked the current movement that led to the decision about the Mississippi flag.

Claims that the flag represents culture and heritage instead of white supremacy are refuted by the words of those honored on confederate monuments. In 1887, then Secretary of the Interior Lucius Q. C. Lamar spoke at the dedication of John Calhoun’s monument and said that he had to talk about Calhoun’s views on enslaving human beings, because “dissimulation and evasion were so foreign to his character that in his own case no one would disapprove and even disdain such silence more than he.” Calhoun was a virulent white supremacist, and last week, the infamous monument was removed from Charleston, South Carolina’s Marion Square following ongoing protests.

America has had 155 years of “dissimulation and evasion” about the confederate battle flag. The facts about the flag have always been damning, and they still are today. In his “Cornerstone” speech of 1861, then-vice president of the confederacy Alexander H. Stephens said the confederacy was founded on the principle that “the negro is not equal to the white man and that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” That statement highlights a truth that “heritage” cannot hide: The heritage of the confederacy was white supremacy. All people who fought under the battle flag that appeared on Mississippi’s state flag fought for white supremacy.

When Mississippi left the union, the state issued a secession statement that left no doubt about an unshakable belief in this racist doctrine:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the Black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

The Union has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union…”

The northern Virginia battle flag stood for the same thing. Virginia’s secession statement was brief, but also clear: “…having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding states. ”

President Trump’s response to this history is laughable. He claims that removing the names of confederate heroes from military institutions would further divide the country, and that monuments should remain, because “if you don’t understand history you will go back to it again.”

Confederate heroes and the battle flag they fought under were willing, as John C. Calhoun wrote, “to drench the country in blood” to maintain white supremacy. Preserving their names on military institutions essentially tells Black Americans, “We don’t care what they did to your ancestors. Don’t bring it up, or we will be even more divided.” Monuments that portray confederate traitors as heroes have done nothing to prevent a new rise in white supremacy — they are literally monuments to this harmful, racist ideology, which will be engrained in our memories and history books no matter how many monuments are toppled. 

When you fly a flag, it has meaning. Especially on July 4. The decision to retire the Mississippi state flag is not erasing history, it is telling the truth about it. And telling the truth is a necessary first step to reckoning with the legacy of slavery in America.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1279407160305336320

Jeffery Robinson, ACLU Deputy Legal Director and Director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality