The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered all aspects of life, including the creation of trade-offs between the right to vote and health. While many states postponed primary elections, Wisconsin forged ahead with their April 7, 2020 primaries. The result was widely criticized, with health officials raising concerns about the spread of COVID-19 through in-person voting. We argue that concerns from Wisconsin health officials about the potential to contract COVID-19 via in-person voting can shift American’s comfort with using various voting methods in November. We test our hypotheses using a survey experiment on a diverse national sample. We find that information about possible coronavirus exposures decreases comfort with voting in-person yet does not increase comfort with voting by mail. We discuss the implications, including the need to tailor messages to specific features of various methods of voting in order to increase citizens’ comfort with voting in upcoming elections.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed all aspects of American life, including, for many, how we vote. We explore the question of who supports unrestricted absentee ballots during a pandemic. We argue that women are more likely to support absentee ballots because they allow for greater flexibility and minimize the potential for exposure. We test this theory using the National Panel Study of COVID-19 (n = 1,892), which asked respondents about their preferences for absentee ballots, their worry about the coronavirus, and their household composition. Using multinomial logistic regressions, we find that women are more likely to support allowing absentee ballots compared with more restrictive voting options and are more likely to say they support absentee ballots for all if they know someone who has contracted COVID-19. The policy implications for these findings are discussed along with other sociodemographic indicators in our analysis.