USA Today  |  March 17, 2020

“I think it’s right to ask the question: How long will this outbreak continue and will this disrupt the elections?” Matthew Kavanagh, a political scientist and assistant professor of global health at Georgetown University, said of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. “Even disrupting primaries is problematic because it disrupts our democratic process and undermines the norms and institutions of democracy at a time when people are scared. And that’s never a good thing.”

“It is unconscionable that we are at this moment facing this pandemic without a plan for how to conduct elections. This pandemic was completely foreseeable,” Kavanagh said, pointing to reports that predicted its likelihood. “I am beside myself that elections officials have not put in place smarter, better ways to actually engage people in electioneering during an outbreak. That is a huge failure of leadership.”

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