How early voting in the US became so widespread and so politicized

WASHINGTON—

America’s voters had much to debate in the 1972 election, but they overwhelmingly agreed that when it came time to vote, they would do so in person on Election Day.

Voting was largely a community experience that year, when about 95% of voters went to their local voting centers, filled out and returned their ballots in person in a single day, according to a census survey at the time. .

That number would gradually decline over the next 50 years as states offered Americans more choices about how and when to vote.

By 2022, only about half of the electorate voted at the polls on Election Day. The share of people who voted before Election Day soared to more than 70% in 2020, and votes cast by mail surpassed those cast on Election Day for the first time in history. That year, many states enacted emergency measures to temporarily expand mail-in voting options to protect voters from the spread of COVID-19.

“We have been following an upward trend in early voting as more states have adopted early voting options and voters have embraced them,” explained University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald, who tracks voter turnout and early voting. . “That has translated into a higher proportion of early votes cast each election cycle.”

For most of that time, early voting was a nonpartisan feature of elections, but during and since the 2020 presidential election, a deep chasm has opened up between the parties over early voting.

Voting before election day is much more common today than it was about 50 years ago. However, this practice is highly politicized, since voting is already underway for the 2024 presidential elections.

What is early voting?

Early voting refers to the range of options people have to vote before Election Day, whether by mail or in person at a polling place.

The term “early voting” can refer collectively to all voting that takes place before Election Day. Sometimes it refers explicitly to votes cast in person at local election offices or voting centers before Election Day.

To avoid confusion, The Associated Press often uses terms like “early voting” or “pre-Election Day voting” to refer to that broader category and “early in-person voting” for the narrower one. “Absentee voting” usually refers to votes cast by mail.

What are the different types of early voting?

Early voting includes both voting by mail and voting in person before Election Day.

Early in-person voting tends to mimic the experience of voting in person on Election Day, both in the type of voting equipment used and the locations that serve as voting centers. The main difference is that voting takes place before election day. The length of in-person early voting periods can vary from state to state.

Voting by mail can be further divided into at least two smaller categories: “no-excuse absentee voting,” in which any voter can request a vote by mail for any reason, and “excused absentee voting,” in which which only voters who have a valid justification why they cannot vote in person on Election Day can vote by mail.

Requiring a valid excuse to cast an absentee ballot – such as travel or illness – used to be the norm in most states. Today, a small number of states still require voters to provide an authorized justification.

A third category of mail-in voting is a hybrid between mail-in voting and early in-person voting: in-person mail-in voting, in which the voter submits (and sometimes fills out) a mail-in ballot in person at a electoral office.

A small but growing number of states hold their elections predominantly by mail. Those states, plus a few others and the District of Columbia, automatically send a ballot to every registered voter.

When did early voting start?

Variants of absentee voting and multi-day voting have been part of American elections since the founding of the nation. The current system of voting by mail and early in-person voting took root more than a century ago. In 1921, Louisiana paved the way for a formalized system of in-person early voting when its constitution specified that “the legislature may establish a method by which absentee voting other than by mail may be permitted.”

Voting by mail is even older, but relatively few voters could take advantage of it in 1972. Just two years later, Washington became the first state in the country to allow any voter to request a vote by mail regardless of the reason.

By 2005, more than half of states had adopted no-excuse absentee voting. Currently, only Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire do not offer either early in-person voting or no-excuse absentee voting.

Does one political party use early voting more than the other?

Yes, but it wasn’t always like this.

Beginning in 1972, early voting gained popularity in both Democratic- and Republican-controlled states. Although there was a partisan divide in some states that sometimes varied from election to election, Gallup polls show that nationally there was little partisan divide in early voting between 2004 and 2016. But the poll showed that voters’ plans to use early voting differed sharply along partisan lines in the 2020 presidential election.

AP’s VoteCast survey of the 2020 electorate found a similar result, with additional details on how the choice of voting method divided the electorate. About two-thirds of the votes cast by mail in that election went to Democrat Joe Biden, compared to about a third for Republican President Donald Trump. Instead, Trump won about two-thirds of the in-person votes on Election Day, compared to about a third for Biden.

Regarding early in-person voting, there was an almost complete tie, with a slight advantage for Trump.

Biden performed better among those who voted before Election Day, especially among those who voted by mail, even in many states where Trump won by large margins, VoteCast showed.

“This is a widespread national phenomenon,” McDonald said.

These patterns continued in the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats accounted for the largest share of mail-in voters, Republicans cast the majority of the vote on Election Day, and maintained a small lead in early voting. in person.

McDonald pointed out that, before 2020, the behavior of the parties in voting prior to election day was the opposite.

“People who voted by mail tended to be more Republican than those who voted early in person,” he said, but those guidelines “were suddenly upended” during the pandemic.

What led to the partisan divide on early voting?

During the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly disparaged, politicized, and undermined mail-in voting, going so far as to block funding for the United States Postal Service to thwart its ability to process mail-in votes that he claimed without evidence were susceptible to general manipulation.

Trump’s messaging on voting by mail has been somewhat inconsistent. He has sometimes said that “absentee voting” is “good.” But he has also claimed that mail-in voting is prone to fraud, which is not supported by decades of mail-in voting carried out in every state. Trump himself has voted by mail on multiple occasions, including in the 2020 primaries.

Trump’s rhetoric appears to have undermined Republicans’ confidence in voting by mail. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in 2023 found that 58% of Republicans were not very confident or not at all confident that mail-in votes would be counted accurately, up from 32% in 2018. Among Democrats, confidence in the counting of mail-in votes increased, going from 28% who declared themselves very or extremely confident in 2018 to 52% in 2023.

What will early voting look like in 2024?

“We have to wait to see how 2024 plays out before making definitive statements about what early voting tells us” about the election, McDonald said.

In some states, absentee voting began as early as mid-September, and more than half of states had begun some form of voting by October 1.

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