![]() Even as President Donald Trump has raised concerns about the fairness and security of mail-in balloting (for which multiple studies have found little evidence), many states are strongly encouraging their citizens to vote that way.Ĭalifornia, Nevada, New Jersey and Vermont are mailing ballots to all registered voters, as are most of Montana’s counties and the District of Columbia. It seems likely that mail voting also will account for a large share of this fall’s general election vote. Mail ballots accounted for more than half the votes cast in 21 of the 49 presidential, state and combined primaries for which detailed vote breakdowns were available. But the magnitude of the increase also reflects people’s concerns about voting in person during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes states made to their voting laws and procedures in response to the pandemic.Īs the scope and seriousness of the pandemic became clear this spring, many states hurriedly shifted their presidential and state primaries to push for – or in some cases require – voting by mail. On one hand, this year’s surge in mail-in voting continues a years-long trend. It’s possible that primary voters may differ in some systematic way from general election voters in terms of the method they choose to vote.) ![]() (This analysis compares voting in this year’s primaries to general election voting in the past two election cycles. ![]() The mail shares in 20 were only slightly lower when all 50 states were included – 25.6% and 23.4%, respectively. In the 2016 general election, 24.9% of that year’s 96.8 million were. In 2018, 27.4% of the 85.4 million general-election votes in the same 38 jurisdictions were mail ballots. (The word “mail” indicates how the ballots are distributed to voters they typically can be returned by mail or dropped off at an election office, drop box or some other authorized place.) As the National Conference of State Legislatures points out, ballots sent to voters and voted somewhere besides a polling place have traditionally been called “absentee ballots.” But as more and more states have made such ballots easier to get – in five states they are now the default way of voting – they are increasingly referred to as “by-mail ballots” or some variation thereof.
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