26 minute read
ON THE COVER
from March 2021
OUR LØST
YEAR
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BY JEREMY MOULE
The last 12 months have been repeatedly called a “lost year” — with the pandemic having taken something from each of us to one degree or another.
For most people, the last year was about canceled vacations and sports seasons, the proliferation of remote work and online learning, and severe bouts of cabin fever. For some, though, the year took everything. The virus has had a tremendous mortal cost. As of this writing, the deaths of more than 1,100 people and counting in Monroe County have been attributed to the virus. For comparison sake, about 1,400 county residents die from heart disease each year.
Nationally, more than 500,000 lives have been lost to COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, and the virus had killed almost 2.5 million people globally.
The pandemic, and the economic fallout around it, also ripped into people’s livelihoods. Roughly 22 million jobs were lost at one point in the last year, according to federal Labor Department data. The unemployment rate plunged to levels not seen since the Great Depression, a cruel setback considering that at the outset of the health crisis unemployment had been at a 50-year low. Only about half of those jobs have been recouped.
The blows kept coming. As people lost income, a potential housing crisis developed, prompting federal and state leaders to enact unprecedented foreclosure and eviction moratoriums. Officials also suspended the collection of federally-owned student loans and zeroed out the interest rate on the debts. New York officials suspended the state’s collection of medical and student debts.
The virus may never be fully eradicated; Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical advisor and the nation’s most trusted voice on COVID-19, has said it’ll probably be endemic. That is, the virus will be ever-present like the common cold.
But the number of new COVID-19 cases are ebbing and every day more people are vaccinated, so the virus, it appears, will be under control soon enough.
Now it’s time to think about a post-pandemic future, and in doing so it would be wise to look back and consider what this global crisis has taught us. There are too many people with precarious jobs and too many of our neighbors who are one lost paycheck away from going hungry or a month away from losing the roofs over their heads.
The pandemic has shown that the country isn't working for too many people, particularly the vulnerable and people who’ve suffered decades of systematic discrimination.
As we learn to live with COVID-19, let’s remember where we’ve been, and let’s be better.
In Monroe County, Blacks and Latinos are more likely to work in service, direct care, and hospitality sectors, leaving them at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.
PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE
Social inequities exacerbate pandemic’s racial gaps
Racial disparities in health were already a problem before COVID-19 blazed its way through communities across the country. But by grafting itself on the timeworn patterns of inequity, COVID-19 propelled them into the public consciousness like they had never been before.
In Monroe County, the statistics have been alarming. Black and Latino patients have been diagnosed at a rate close to double that of white patients, according to a November analysis by the Center for Community Health & Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Black patients are hospitalized with COVID-19 at roughly four times the rate of white patients and Latinos at three times the rate. Both groups have died from illness at twice the rate of whites.
Nationally, the virus claimed so many lives in the first half of 2020 that it skewed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention life expectancy data. In a February report, CDC researchers found that life expectancy dropped by about one year for all Americans, falling to 77.8 years from 78.8. But it fell by two years for the Latino population, to 79.9 from 81.8, and almost three years for the Black population, to 72 from 74.7.
But Blacks and Latinos have been disproportionately affected by the virus for the same reason they have higher rates of emergency room visits for asthma, have higher rates of uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension, and account for a higher proportion of Monroe County’s lead poisoning cases, explained Wade Norwood, CEO of the regional health research and planning organization Common Ground Health.
Structural racism and poverty are the root of each health disparity, he said.
“Since a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, since we have a light being shown on it, it’s the opportunity for us to think differently about how it is we consider economic status as being a determinant of health outcomes,” Norwood said.
In the Rochester region, Blacks and Latinos are three times as likely as whites to live in poverty, according to a 2019 report from Common Ground Health. They’re also more likely to live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty and a lack of quality housing, where leaky roofs lead to mold and mildew that exacerbates asthma and where lead paint is unabated.
Blacks and Latinos in Monroe County are more likely to be essential workers in the service, hospitality, and direct-care sectors, where employees have little choice but to interact with large numbers of people, explained Norwood. These jobs also tend to be among some of the lowest paid and the workers tend to live in closer quarters, with many living in multi-generational households, Norwood added.
“These essential workers, who have not been staying at home, whose work has still entailed lots of high-contact, high-exposure potential to the virus, those folks are in the front of the line when it comes to having to be exposed,” Norwood said. “But, as Stevie Wonder said, they’re in the back of the line when it comes to getting ahead.”
Toll on tenants: Falling behind and crossing fingers
The pandemic has been a massive public health concern, but it also set off a global economic crisis. As countless renters and homeowners across the country lost income or jobs, many were at risk of losing their homes.
Nobody knows exactly how many people are on the brink of eviction or foreclosure, though there’s consensus that a large portion of the population is at risk, particularly low-income households and people of color.
In the city of Rochester, landlords who own three or fewer properties reported that 44.4 percent of their apartment buildings had at least one unit in arrears, according to a landlord survey conducted for the city by a Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative researcher. Of the 2,289 landlords invited to participate in the survey, 10 percent responded.
The researcher, Elijah de la Campa, estimated that citywide the amount of rent in arrears was between $3.2 million and $5.1 million.
“So many people are so far behind,” said Mark Muoio, program director for the Legal Aid Society of Rochester’s Housing Unit.
Muoio said that Rochester City Court currently has 855 eviction cases pending, most of which were filed between October and
29% OF U.S. ADULTS WHO HAD INDICATED THEY WERE BEHIND ON THEIR RENT OR MORTGAGE ANTICIPATED THAT THEY'D FACE EVICTION OR FORECLOSURE IN THE NEXT TWO MONTHS.
Tenant rights activist groups have urged state officials for stronger eviction protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE
December. Not all of them are tenants who haven’t paid rent, which is a key distinction. State law prohibits evicting tenants who haven’t been able to make their rent due to pandemic-related hardships. Courts, however, can still issue money judgements for back rent in those cases.
Monroe County and the city of Rochester have established programs to help struggling tenants and homeowners, including direct rental assistance payments. According to city officials, the city’s direct rental assistance program has 500 applications that are under review.
But the pandemic’s strain on tenants, homeowners, and landlords is not a problem specific to Rochester.
The U.S. Census Bureau has conducted semi-weekly household surveys throughout the pandemic and it reported that 11 percent of New York households were, as of Feb. 1, either behind on rent or mortgage payments, or had little to no confidence that their households would make the next month’s payment on time.
Of the adults living in households that were behind on rent or mortgage payments, 29 percent said it was very or somewhat likely that they’d face eviction or foreclosure within the next two months.
Coronavirus and civil unrest are forever linked
Before May 25, the pandemic and the economic free-fall it had precipitated dominated headlines. But that day, a police officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on a Minneapolis street and killed him.
Floyd’s killing ignited nationwide civil unrest. People took to the streets in cities across the country to protest not only his death, but the systemic and structural racism that his death — and later that of Daniel Prude — came to represent.
In that sense, the pandemic and the mass racial justice demonstrations were intrinsically linked. Just as people of color were at disproportionate risk of arrest, incarceration, and police violence, so too were they at greater risk than whites of contracting COVID-19.
On May 30, Black Lives Matter organizers in Rochester put together a protest in response to Floyd’s killing. By some estimates, more than 1,000 people marched through downtown, chanting, singing, and denouncing the Rochester Police Department.
Around 4 p.m., the crowd encircled the city Public Safety Building on Exchange Street. There, two patrol cars were destroyed, city vehicles were flipped over, and demonstrators danced on a police cruiser.
Officers quashed the protest by firing PepperBalls and tear gas canisters into the crowd. By 7 p.m. the crowd had dispersed, but looting had begun in some areas of the city and adjacent suburbs, and both the city and county called a 9 p.m. curfew. Similar scenes had played out in cities across the country. Protests, organized by Free the People Roc, continued on a regular basis throughout the summer. As the crowds repeatedly called on city government to “defund the police,” officers working crowd control generally kept their distance.
They took on a renewed sense of urgency by September, however, when Prude’s death at the hands of Rochester police officers was made public. The nightly demonstrations that followed were met with higher levels of force from the police, especially as protesters neared the Public Safety Building. The officers fired indiscriminate volleys of tear gas and PepperBalls into the crowds, the latter striking some protesters in the head and chest. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that officers fired over 6,000 PepperBalls during the first three nights of protests.
The pressure generated by activists and demonstrators ultimately led the city and county to make changes to the ways they handle people in mental distress, as Prude was the night he was suffocated.
County Executive Adam Bello pledged to bulk up an Office of Mental Health program that pairs mental health clinicians with police officers responding to calls in which a person is experiencing a crisis.
Mayor Lovely Warren’s administration created a Person in Crisis team staffed by 14 workers who are to respond to some mental health or substance abuse calls instead of police.
Both the city and county efforts are still under development.
One of many Black Lives Matter marches that took place in the Rochester area during the course of the pandemic.
PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE
March 7, 2020: Gov. Andrew Cuomo declares a state of emergency for New York due to the growing number of COVID-19 cases statewide.
March 11: The first case of COVID-1 in Monroe County is confirmed in a person who had traveled to Italy. The World Health Organization declares that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
March 16: School buildings close for the rest of the 2019-20 year and districts begin remote instruction for students. Rochester Regional Health and University of Rochester Medical Center hospitals close to visitors.
March 17: Alvin Simmons, 54, is the first person in Monroe County to die from COVID-19. Simmons worked at Rochester General Hospital and was an Army veteran with two children.
March 20: The 2020 Lilac Festival, scheduled for mid May, is canceled. Most of Rochester’s other festivals will eventually follow suit. March 27: The city shuts down public playgrounds, basketball courts, athletic fields, and outdoor fitness equipment.
April 2: Rochester International Jazz Festival promoters announce that the event, scheduled for June, is postponed until the fall. On July 10, the festival is canceled for the year.
May 5: University of Rochester Medical Center and Rochester Regional Health announce that they’ll be among the institutions working with Pfizer and BioNTech to test COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The FDA grants emergency approval to the companies’ vaccine on Dec. 11.
May 11: Gov. Cuomo announces that the Rochester region had slowed the spread of the virus enough that businesses could begin reopening in a phased approach.
March 22: Beginning at 8 p.m., all non-essential businesses close under Gov. Cuomo’s “NY on Pause” executive order.
March 24: Ted O’Brien, a former Democratic state senator and county legislator who currently leads the Rochester office of the state attorney general, is hospitalized with complications from COVID-19. He recovers and is released after nine weeks.
1 DEATH
100 DEATHS May 30: Hundreds of people march through downtown Rochester to protest the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers as well as police brutality and racism within law enforcement. The protest ends in front of the city Public Safety Building and violence breaks out. Officials impose a curfew across the city and county.
200 DEATHS May 31: THREE MONTHS SINCE THE PANDEMIC HIT. Monroe County has 2,871 confirmed COVID-19 cases,952 of which are active. On average, there are 33 new cases a day. The virus has caused 219 deaths.
June 12: The KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival announces that it will take place this year. The performances will be presented through streaming video.
June 12: The board of the Out Alliance, an LGBTQ advocacy and services organization that’s been active in Rochester since 1973, suspends the agency’s operations because of financial problems, which were exacerbated by the pandemic.
June 23: The year’s primaries become the first elections in New York state where every voter is eligible to cast a ballot through the mail. But confusion among voters and poll workers regarding absentee and in-person balloting leads to complaints.
June 25: The city and its sponsors begin a six-week run of drive-in movies in the Frontier Field parking lot.
July 1: The Rochester Red Wings cancels its already delayed season.
July 6: The city reopens its basketball courts and athletic fields. The state also gives the go-ahead for low-risk youth sports to start.
July 13: Gov. Cuomo announces schools can reopen in the fall as long as the region’s infection rate remains below 5 percent over 14 days. July 28: Kodak announces that it anticipates receiving a $765 million loan from the federal government to start making chemicals for pharmaceuticals, including drugs that treat COVID-19. In August, the government halts the loan amid a Securities and Exchange Commission probe of the deal and stock transactions that happened around the time it was announced.
Aug. 13: The Rochester City School District announces that students will begin the coming year using remote learning.
Aug. 14: Bowling alleys are permitted to reopen.
Aug. 19: Colleges and universities across the region resume on-campus instruction for the fall semester and Rochester Institute of Technology is the first school to begin classes.
Aug. 31: A FULL SIX MONTHS HAVE PASSED. The number of people in Monroe County hospitalized with COVID-19 hits its lowest point since the pandemic began. There are 12 people in the hospital, seven of whom are in ICUs. Monroe County has 319 active confirmed COVID-19 cases and is averaging 16 new cases a day. Infections slowed considerably throughout the summer, but the total number of cases to date has risen to 5,209, with 292 deaths. Sept. 1: The county reports only six new cases of COVID-19, the lowest number of cases reported in a single day since March 18.
Sept. 2: The March 23 arrest of Daniel Prude, and his subsequent death at the hands of Rochester police officers, is made public. Weeks of daily protests ensue.
Sept. 10-14: Monroe County schools reopen, with many using a mix of in-person and remote learning.
Oct. 21: Gov. Cuomo announces that movie theaters in most of the state can reopen with reduced capacity as long as the region’s COVID-19 positivity rate averages less than 2 percent over 14 days. On Nov. 1, Monroe County’s seven-day positivity rate crosses the 2 percent threshold and remains above that mark through February.
Oct. 24: Early voting for the general election begins. Thousands of Monroe County residents, many of whom fear their ballots could get delayed in the mail, line up at polling sites.
Nov. 9: Rochester and several Monroe County towns become COVID-19 “yellow zones” under the state’s new microcluster strategy. The move brings with it some restrictions as well as a push for additional testing in schools.
Nov. 23: The state classifies the city of Rochester and parts of a few towns as “orange zones” under its microcluster strategy. The designation means businesses including gyms and hair salons have to close, and that restaurants and bars cannot offer indoor dining. Due to public pressure and court rulings, some of the restrictions are loosened.
Nov. 30: NINE MONTHS HAVE PASSED. Toward the end of October, the number of COVID-19 cases began to rise rapidly. To date, there are 15,296 confirmed cases, 3,201 of which are currently active, as well as 328 deaths. The county is seeing an average of 429 new cases a day.
Dec. 1: The Genesee Brewery announces that it will not have a keg tree this year. The lighting ceremony had been a Rochester tradition since 2013.
Dec. 11: Gov. Cuomo announces that salons, barber shops, and gyms located in orange zones can reopen.
Dec. 15: COVID-19 vaccinations begin in Monroe County, starting with a group of 10 employees at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dec. 23: Gov. Cuomo announces that the state is developing a plan that would allow some Buffalo Bills fans to attend the team’s Jan. 9 playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts. It’s the Bills first home playoff game in 24 years and the team, playing in front of roughly 6,700 spectators, wins 27-24. Bills Stadium can hold over 71,000 people.
Dec. 31: Amidst a surge of cases related to holiday gatherings and travel, Monroe County records 838 new cases, its highest single-day total of the entire pandemic. It’s also averaging 563 new cases a day, though by the end of January the figure drops to 315.
Jan 4: New York officials report the state’s first case of a more infectious COVID-19 strain that has its origins in the U.K.
Jan. 20: The state opens a vaccination site at Dome Arena in Henrietta, though demand for the shots far exceeds supply.
Jan. 27: Gov. Cuomo ends yellow and orange zone restrictions in Monroe County and across most of the state.
Jan. 28: Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County’s public health commissioner, clears the way for schools to resume “high-risk” sports.
Feb. 3: Monroe County records 1,000 COVID-19 deaths. Feb. 5: The Rochester Americans — the Amerks — play their very delayed 2020-21 season opener at Blue Cross Arena against the Utica Comets.
Feb. 8: The Rochester City School District resumes in-person instruction for students in pre-K through grade 6, with students in higher grades returning to classrooms on Feb. 22.
Feb.18: The county reaches 1,100 deaths. Feb.23: To date, Monroe County has had 50,882 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 2,161 of which are active. On average there are 139 new cases a day and the virus has caused 1,124 deaths.
Feb.28: A FULL 12 MONTHS HAVE PASSED. Monroe County has recorded over 51,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 1,100 deaths.
600 DEATHS
500 DEATHS
400 DEATHS
700 DEATHS
800 DEATHS
900 DEATHS
7 DAY AVERAGE OF CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES IN MONROE COUNTY
SOURCE: MONROE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
1,000 DEATHS
1,100 DEATHS NUMBER OF CASES
700
650
600
550
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
100
300 DEATHS 50
0
Art galleries and museums are slowly resuming normal operations, theater troupes are preparing shows for the stage, and state officials are working with venues and talent across New York to launch a performing arts series.
But it has been a slog for arts organizations, whose bottom lines have been decimated by the pandemic. Music, the visual arts, and performing arts all need audiences to thrive, but the state shutdown that began in March forced stages to go dark, concert halls to fall silent, and museums to cut off access to patrons.
Even though the state lifted restrictions on some businesses and activities, musicians and other performing artists are still limited in their ability to stage live, in-person shows.
All of this has meant that local creatives have had to get, well, creative. Early in the pandemic, musicians and bands started streaming live performances from both polished and makeshift home studios using Facebook, Instagram, and even Zoom. Many used the lull to push out new singles and records, or to work on collaborative projects.
Instead of inviting the public in to view paintings, collages, photographs, sculptures, and other forms of visual art, galleries curated online exhibitions. Organizers of the popular First Friday art openings pivoted and turned the monthly event into a series of online presentations by artists.
While its doors were closed, the Memorial Art Gallery offered virtual tours of exhibits. Likewise, the George Eastman Museum directed would-be patrons to its online collections catalog, which includes thousands of digitized items. Both museums are now open.
The Fringe Festival shifted its roughly 175 productions to a mix of pre-recorded, on-demand shows, and live performances streamed online. Several of the area’s film festivals also shifted to online programs and screenings.
As spring and summer approach, the seasons hold a promise of some return to live music, dance, and theater performances, though it will be some of the larger institutions and productions testing the waters.
Geva plans to offer a full outdoor production in August, for example. And after postponing and ultimately canceling its 2020 event, the Rochester International Jazz Festival is set to happen this year on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus, which organizers say will better allow for physical distancing and other COVID-19 countermeasures.
Rochester’s art scene never went dormant, but its vibrancy has yet to return.
At the beginning of the pandemic, all schools moved to remote learning. Most districts are now using a hybrid
blend of in-person and online instruction for students. PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE
The 12-month COVID-19 pandemic is often described as a “lost year,” and perhaps nowhere has that been felt more than in the country’s schools.
When schools, colleges, and universities closed down in March 2020, the thinking was it was temporary, with some officials talking about a two-week shutdown. But as it became clear the pandemic would carry on well beyond that time frame, institutions switched students — from elementary schoolers to college post-grads — to remote learning.
It was a rocky transition. Instructors and school administrators had to figure out how to conduct lessons on video conferencing platforms, and they had to work with parents to figure out how to get students the hardware, software, and internet connections they needed.
The problems were particularly acute, and remain so, in Rochester public schools, where many students didn’t have adequate internet access in their homes. The school district provided students with mobile Wi-Fi devices and Chromebooks, but the reviews have been mixed.
Parents were in unfamiliar territory, as they had to assume some teaching roles, often while they were still working. Students suffered because they weren’t around their classmates throughout the day, and because clubs and sports were put on hold.
This fall, universities and colleges reopened their campuses to students, though every school is using a combination of in-person and online instruction so as to keep space between everyone in classrooms and labs.
Many public school districts took a similar hybrid approach, though the Rochester City School District used remote learning for most students through part of February.
After a year of remote learning, school districts and families are still working through kinks. Districts have struggled with student attendance in some cases, while some students have found it difficult to remain engaged in online classes. One day in January, a person logged into a Penfield middle school virtual classroom from Indiana and posted racial slurs in the chat section.
There are those who champion remote learning and see potential for it to provide a better learning environment for students who are easily distracted or for students who do better when they can learn at their own pace.
But online learning’s detractors have been more vocal. Their argument is a simple one: that a screen is no substitute for face-to-face instruction as well as in-person interaction with teachers and classmates. There are tangible and intangible benefits to the school environment, which provides the kind of socialization that COVID-19 robbed from most everyone.
WFH: Turning homes into workplaces
The way many people work may never be quite the same.
Prior to the pandemic, telecommuting was already growing in popularity among workers and employers. But as government-mandated COVID-19 shutdowns forced companies to reduce office headcounts, sometimes by 100 percent, many rapidly shifted to work-from-home models.
Suddenly, employers and workers raced to make sure company systems could be accessed remotely and that employees were connected not just by phone and e-mail, but by productivity tools such as Slack, Teams, and WebEx. Zoom, with a capital “Z,” is now an everyday verb. “WFH” — working from home — became as ubiquitous as “WTF.”
Several surveys and polls have tried to pinpoint the percentage of the labor force that’s been working from home during the pandemic, but the numbers vary. A Gallup poll from October found that 33 percent of respondents were working from home on a full-time basis and 25 percent on a part-time basis. Of the respondents, 41 percent said they weren’t working remotely at all.
By comparison, 2018 Census Bureau data showed that 3.6 percent of the workforce telecommuted during at least half of its work week, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics.
Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom, who had conducted several nationwide remote work surveys, estimated in June that 42 percent of U.S. employees were working full-time from home. Another 26 percent of the labor force, largely essential service workers, continued on at their workplaces. The remaining 33 percent were not working at all.
Workers and employers both want remote work to stay, at least to an extent. In the October Gallup poll, two-thirds of respondents stated that they want to continue working from home after the pandemic. In August, Harvard Business School researchers reported that one-third of the firms they surveyed believed that remote work would be more common after the pandemic ends.
But not every job is suited to remote work. In December, the Pew Research Center released the results of a survey it conducted on remote work, and 62 percent of respondents said that their jobs cannot be done from home.
Pew survey respondents with a bachelor’s degree or higher were far more likely to have jobs that could be done from home than those with some college education, a high school diploma, or less. The same pattern emerged for upper-income workers versus middle- and lower-income workers.
The shift to remote work also highlighted one of America’s technological and social struggles. Bloom reported that in his surveys, only 65 percent of respondents said they had internet connections robust enough to support “workable video calls.”
“The remaining 35 percent have such poor internet at home – or no internet – that it prevents effective telecommuting,” he said, noting the inequality as one of several already developing around telecommuting.
33% 25% 41%
WORKING FROM HOME FULL-TIME WORKING FROM HOME PART-TIME
NOT WORKING REMOTLEY AT ALL
GALLUP POLL OCTOBER 2020
Voters waited in long lines at Perinton Square Mall on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020, during the first
weekend of early voting in the presidential and general elections. PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE
Changing the way we vote — and who votes
It took a global pandemic for New York to experiment with allowing all registered voters to cast their ballots by mail. The de facto test went well enough that lawmakers are now pushing to amend the state’s constitution so voters have the choice to vote by mail in every election.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an emergency order in April 2020 that cleared the way for New Yorkers to vote by absentee ballot in the June primaries. All they had to do was check the temporary illness box on their ballot applications. The state Legislature would later pass a law allowing the same for the November general election.
The idea, of course, was to avoid crowding at polling stations, which state health officials feared could turn an election into a superspreader event. More than a quarter of voters — 27 percent — submitted an absentee ballot. By comparison, absentees accounted for just under 5 percent of ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.
The virus was able to do something that good government and election reform advocates had tried to do for decades: push state officials to enact no-excuse absentee voting.
The way state law currently stands, in normal times anyway, people are eligible to apply for and receive an absentee ballot if they won’t be in the county on Election Day or meet one of several other criteria, such as having a permanent illness or disability. No-excuse absentee voting allows any registered voter to get a mail-in ballot with no qualifying circumstances.
The approach is hardly radical or exotic. New York is just a dinosaur when it comes to voting.
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have noexcuse absentee voting, and five states conduct their elections almost entirely by mail, with minor exceptions for dinosaurs.
Supporters of universal mailin voting argue that it makes participating in the democratic process more convenient and more accessible. Voters would no longer have to take time out of their work day to vote or line up transportation to polling sites, for example.
Whether the wider availability of absentee ballots bolstered voter participation in the 2020 elections is difficult to say, but it sure didn’t hurt. A record 159 million Americans cast a ballot in the presidential election.
Presidential election years always have higher voter turnout than the contests in between, and the stakes were particularly high in November.
In Monroe County, 78 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, the sixth-highest turnout rate over the past 40 years of presidential elections, according to the county Board of Elections.
159
MILLION
ABSENTEE BALLOTS CAST IN THE U.S.
