Voting by mail has been championed as the safest way to participate in the 2020 election while the nation remains under threat from the coronavirus. Experts have advocated for the expansion of mail-in voting for years as a proven way to increase participation, as an estimated 43 percent of eligible voters do not vote.

But changes that states are scrambling to make ahead of November risk supersizing the issues of racial discrimination and disenfranchisement that Black, Hispanic and other voters of color have already spent generations fighting. "There's disparities at every step of the process, and they're going to be really exacerbated — they're already being exacerbated — by the coronavirus," one voting rights advocate said.