America’s fight over

masks has reached a new

front: polling places.

On Election Day, voters

across the country will

face varying rules about

mask-wearing when they

cast a ballot as officials try

to balance public safety

precautions amid a global

pandemic with the constitutional

right to vote.

Most states, even ones

with broad mask mandates,

are stopping short of forcing

voters to use a face

covering. Instead, they’re

opting for recommendations

to wear them while

providing options for voters

who refuse.

“We are asking everyone

at the polls to observe

social distancing inside and

outside of polling places,

and not to create disturbances

about wearing or

not wearing face coverings,”

said Meagan Wolfe,

chief elections official in

Wisconsin, where a state

mask mandate applies to

poll workers but not voters.

During the early voting

period, disagreements over

masks occasionally led to

long voting lines and had

election officials clearing

polling sites for the maskless

or directing them to

stations away from other

machines.

Still, due to the decentralized

nature of the country’s

voting systems, rules

are different depending

on where ballots are cast.

Some places are taking

harder stances than others.

In one case that caught

national attention, a Maryland

man was arrested after refusing to wear a mask while trying to

vote last month. He has since sued his

local election board over the incident.

In Texas, the issue has wound up in

court.

First, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott

carved out an exception for voting

locations in his statewide mask mandate

issued earlier this year. Then, in

response to a challenge from voting

rights groups, a federal judge ordered

that masks must be worn inside polling

sites. That decision was quickly

reversed by an appeals court.

Despite the legal back and forth, at

least some Texas elections administrators

had chosen not to enforce the

short-lived polling station mask mandate.

Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy

program at the Brennan Center

for Justice, said governments should be

able to require masks at polling places

during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Despite the few attempts to challenge

mask requirements in court, there

is no question that it is well within the

legal authority of states and localities

to require masks to be worn at polling

places — both as a matter of public

health and as a reasonable regulation

of the election process,” she said.

With Election Day looming, most

places have settled on a strategy of

strongly encouraging voters to wear

masks. Their message is that abiding by

widely accepted health guidelines will

protect poll workers and other voters.

In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance

Bottoms over the weekend signed an

extension of measures designed to

limit the spread of the virus, including a

mask mandate in the city. But her order

specifically says “no individual shall be

denied ingress or egress to or from a

polling place for failure to wear a facial

covering or mask.”

Gabriel Sterling, statewide voting

system implementation manager for the

secretary of state’s office, said during a

news conference Monday that individual

poll managers will have to decide

how to accommodate people who have

tested positive or are in quarantine. He

suggested that one way to handle them

might be pulling them aside and having

them vote a hand-marked paper ballot

away from everyone else, rather than

having them use one of the touchscreen

voting machines.