In any normal election year, Tuesday would have been a pretty big deal.
It’s presidential primary election day in eight states from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, plus D.C. — and the last big warm-up for the national election on Nov. 3.
But it’s being conducted in the strangest of times.
The nation is still partially shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic; voters wore masks, as did poll workers, who often Saturday behind plexiglass shields. Several of Tuesday’s primaries were supposed to be held earlier, but were postponed due to Covid-19.
At the same time, the U.S. is convulsed by mass protests demanding racial justice, along with destructive rioting, following last week’s death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed in police custody in Minneapolis.
“We think we’re prepared,” Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Patton Mills told the Associated Press. “Thank goodness we have the opportunity of working this out in the primary because we don’t know where we’ll be with the pandemic in November.”
Former vice president Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee. In November he’ll seek to end the Trump presidency after one term.
Biden, the AP says, “needs to win 89% of all delegates at stake on Tuesday to formally clinch the nomination,” but even if he falls short he’ll “almost certainly secure the needed delegates later in the month if necessary.”
Some problems cropped up for primary voters around the country, including “confusion about where to cast ballots, long lines and poor social distancing,” reports the Washington Post, noting that in Philadelphia only 190 polling places were open, instead of the usual 831.
In-person voting was light in many places, since large numbers of voters chose to mail in their ballots.
A total of 419 delegates to the Democratic National Convention were being chosen on Tuesday.
States holding primaries included Idaho (20 delegates), Indiana (70), Maryland (79), Montana (16), New Mexico (29), Pennsylvania (153), Rhode Island (21) and South Dakota (14), along with D.C (17). Voters in Iowa, which held its presidential caucuses earlier in the year, were making only down-ballot choices.
