The Second Masked Ballot

Our unprecedented president—the first to win office without prior government or military experience—confronts an unprecedented situation: A pandemic that has forced the government to put the economy to sleep months before a presidential election.

The last time America faced something similar was 1918. The Spanish Flu decimated a population mobilized for its first European war. State and local governments implemented lockdowns, quarantines, and other social-distancing measures to slow the spread of infection.

The midterm campaign was conducted against a background of fear. In San Francisco, authorities required poll workers and voters to wear masks. It was, said the San Francisco Chronicle, “the first masked ballot ever known in the history of America.”

If this masked ballot is anything like its predecessor, the incumbent is in trouble. The voters who showed up on Election Day 1918 rebuked Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party. It lost control of both the House and the Senate. Two years later, Democrats lost the White House as well.