The election process is officially underway in many states across the country, but how voters are casting their votes varies from state to state. On Friday, three states voted in person for the first time. In Minnesota and South Dakota, absentee voters were able to go to a polling station. In Virginia Any registered voter can now vote. Many states now send absentee ballots to voters living overseas or serving in the military.
The first mail-in ballots will be sent out in Maryland and New Jersey on Saturday.
“Vote early. Vote absentee. Vote on Election Day. Do whatever you want, but you must vote,” former President Donald Trump told attendees at a rally in Atlanta in August.
With more options available for voting than ever before, the presidential election campaign requires more and more voter turnout every day. like election day,
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“Your voice is your vote, North Carolina. And you’re going to make a big difference in the outcome of this race,” Vice President Harris said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on September 12.
The first major early voting practice dates back to the Civil War. Many soldiers were fighting out of state, but were allowed to vote as if they were present at the polling station. By World War II, every state allowed soldiers to vote absentee.
“In the early 20th century, people started to realize that our population was mobile. We had people working on the railroads, building railroads across the country, people traveling for business. And gradually, state by state, we introduced this option for people to vote by mail,” said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Starting in the 1970s, some states began offering mail-in voting for all registered voters, with no excuse required.
“In 1978, California was the first state to No-excuse absentee voting“California and some other places started thinking let’s make this more convenient,” Fortier said.
Voters fill out their ballots at a polling station during the Massachusetts state primary on Tuesday.
Some states have also begun allowing a limited number of absentee voting. Texas and Tennessee are among the first to do so.
By the 2000 election, 21 states allowed all registered voters to cast ballots by mail if they wished to do so. Arkansas joined Tennessee and Texas in allowing in-person early voting without an excuse. Every other state had a mail-in voting option for absentee voters who provided an excuse why they couldn’t make it to their polling station on election day. Still, only 14% of ballots were cast early in 2000.
“Both of those trends (voting by mail and in-person absentee early voting) have actually increased every year and increased very dramatically again in 2020,” Fortier said.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of early votes rose to 69%. Mississippi was the only state that required early voting Excuse for voters to vote early. Texas and Tennessee, as well as Louisiana and Indiana, offered in-person early voting. Every other state allowed mail-in ballots. Nine states and Washington, D.C., held all-mail elections in which all registered voters were sent a ballot.
“2020 was an extraordinary year where we saw this huge surge, even with very different opinions from Democrats and Republicans on whether you should vote by mail,” Fortier said.
While the Trump campaign has attempted to push voters to vote by mail, the former president has criticized all-mail elections.
“You have to have an honest voting system, because, you know, you don’t have an honest voting system. They send out millions and millions of ballots. They go all over the place,” former president trump Said in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on September 13. “Some people get 2, 3, 4 or 5 votes. You have a very dishonest system here. If I ran in California with an honest vote counter, I would win California.”
Eight states and Washington, D.C. still hold elections by mail. New Jersey still allows this method in small areas.
“There’s really not a one-size-fits-all approach,” Fortier said. “We have states like Oregon and Washington, where it’s basically 100% voting by mail. There’s almost no polling stations. We have some states in the Northeast and some in the Deep South that really look a lot more traditional.”
For the 2024 election, Alabama and New Hampshire have adopted requirements similar to Mississippi. Only absentee voters can vote by mail with a valid excuse such as illness, being out of state or working a shift that conflicts with voting times. Democrats have questioned efforts to limit access to voting.
(AP, left, AP/J.C. Hong, top right, Sarah Rice (for The Washington Post) via Getty Images, bottom right)
“Across our country, we are witnessing a full-blown assault on other hard-fought and hard-won basic rights. Freedom and rights “I think the freedom to vote is an important thing,” Vice President Harris said at a September 13 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Since 2020, seven other states have eliminated mail ballots for all voters, and now offer in-person voting instead. Overall, 36 states continue to allow voters to vote by mail.
“I personally think there may be some value to voting a little bit early, but voting four or five or six weeks early is no better than voting in person a few weeks early and doesn’t really increase voter turnout. And it’s still not really more convenient,” Fortier said.
Pennsylvania was expected to begin mailing ballots on September 16, but election officials clarified the timeline, saying they plan to begin processing ballots that same day. They cited some delays due to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to be removed from the November ballot.
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“I think people have this good instinct that they want there to be a ballot, a tangible physical ballot. And we’ve moved in this direction toward ballots with all of our voting technology. But we also have very complex ballots that have multiple people, sometimes ten, 20 races that you’re voting for in a particular election. And that really means we need to use technology to count them,” Fortier said.
Similar legal battles are ongoing in North Carolina.
“Unfortunately, all the ballots have been printed, but our Republican Supreme Court has said you have to destroy all of those ballots and reprint them,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper-D said after the presidential debate in Pennsylvania.
Ballots are expected to begin being sent to military and overseas voters in North Carolina on Friday. Federal law requires all ballots going abroad to be sent by Sept. 21. All other absentee ballots in North Carolina will be sent next week. That’s about three weeks after the state’s initial deadline of Sept. 6 for absentee ballots.
“I Voted” stickers lie on a table at a polling place in Massachusetts.
Some election officials have expressed concern over this. Mail Ballot Process and counting votes, as some states sent out ballots later than previously scheduled. One such state, Pennsylvania, will not begin processing mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
“States want to have multiple convenient parts to voting, and they don’t think about how they all fit together. If you want early voting in multiple locations, so you can vote anywhere, you need a good database behind the scenes,” Fortier said.
While 12 states, including swing state Arizona, will begin processing and counting ballots before Election Day, laws prevent those results from being reported until Nov. 5. 14 states, including competitive Minnesota, won’t begin counting mail ballots until after polls close. Toss-up state Nevada allows all-mail elections. The state will still count ballots that arrive up to four days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 5.
“I’m optimistic and I think we’ll probably see things move a little bit faster than we did in 2020, which was an extraordinary year,” Fortier said. “Arizona has the most mail-in voting of any state. It’ll probably take a little longer, but I think there’s a good chance we’ll know the results, unless it’s very close.”
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Our Fox News poll in August showed Harris with a one-point lead in Arizona. The Real Clear Politics average gives Trump a lead of just 1 point.
“Voting by mail is not going to be as high or as unpredictable. And so, I think many states will be prepared for that and be able to count more quickly,” Fortier said. “If we’re very, very close, we’re certainly likely to see recounts. We’re likely to see recounts. And those things can take a very long time.”
