Democracy During the Pandemic: Are Public Officials Making the Right Decisions?

The pandemic has forced public officials at all levels of government to make difficult decisions on how to protect citizens, when and how to hold elections, how to apportion relief money and resources, and more. Are they making the right decisions, and how will voter turnout in November be impacted by these decisions?

This Wednesday, May 20th, USC Schwarzenegger Institute Academic Director Dr. Christian Grose will release the results of a new Schwarzenegger Institute national survey of local election officials about their state and local emergency preparations around COVID19.

At this virtual event, Dr. Grose will discuss the best and most common practices that local election officials all across the United States identified in the survey as being important for administering the November 2020 elections. Information on levels of local and state preparedness and what local and state election officials are doing to address the protection of voters during the primaries and November will be discussed.  Dr. Grose will be joined by two other researchers, Dr. Jane Junn and Nicholas Napolio, who will discuss other government responses to COVID-19, such as decisions the Centers for Disease Control has made around allocating spending to the states.