MINNEAPOLIS — Early voting starts in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming Friday as registered voters across the country continue to request and receive record numbers of absentee ballots.
Voters strolling into a polling station and casting a ballot 45 days before an Election Day isn’t a new phenomenon. But amid the coronavirus pandemic and virus-related mail delays, officials are bracing for a surge in people wishing to have their say regarding the Nov. 3 contests early and in person — and campaigns are encouraging it like never before.
Skidmore College political science professor Christopher Mann said campaigns were hoping to “bank” as many votes as possible, as early as possible, in case the COVID-19 outbreak worsens in the fall and, for example, forces polling places to close temporarily. Banking votes, particularly from reliable supporters, frees campaigns up to focus their efforts on persuading other people to cast a ballot.
“In a normal year, they might say, ‘Hey, it’s convenient. You can do it any time you want. Make sure you do it,'” Mann told the Washington Examiner of early voting messaging. “Now, they’re likely to say, ‘Do it right away, so that anything that happens later doesn’t make it more difficult for you to vote.'”
The number of people choosing to vote early in person or absentee by mail has steadily increased during the past two decades. About 35% of ballots were cast before Election Day in 2016. Four years later, pundits are expecting that figure to be closer to 60% or more. They base that projection on population growth and growing anticipation regarding the contests, especially that between President Trump and 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“That sort of rise in turnout would mean more people deciding at the last minute or waiting until Election Day because infrequent voters generally show up more there. That may not be the case this time,” Mann said.
For Mann, that prediction is bolstered by early voting’s popularity during this cycle’s later primaries as people tried to follow guidance suggesting they avoid crowds.
“The pandemic means we’re seeing the skyrocketing rates of voting by mail. But those same forces in the pandemic, which are both concerns about public health and uncertainty about what’s going to happen on Election Day given the struggles that some states have had in their primary elections, are going to drive even more people to want to vote before Election Day,” he said, also listing potential poll worker shortages.
Mann added, “And the idea that there are people who are reluctant about the mail means that I think we’re going to see a lot of people go vote early.”
The professor explained that traditionally Republicans held the partisan edge when it came to voting early and absentee by mail. Yet Democrats had evened the political score since they built the organizing machine that boosted former President Barack Obama’s 2008 White House bid.
“The more effective campaign — better financed, better strategy — can take advantage of the opportunity, just like any other political opportunity,” he said.
More Republicans, though, may opt to vote early in person because Trump has repeatedly sowed doubt about absentee ballots as an avenue for voter fraud, according to Mann.
“Because of President Trump’s rhetoric, mail ballots are tilting heavily Democratic. We’re seeing that in requests data from states, we see it in the early returns in states that have mailed them out, which suggests that early, in-person voting is likely to tilt towards Republicans just because if we’re going to see a lot of people vote before Election Day, and Republicans aren’t voting by mail, the path that’s left to them is early, in-person voting,” Mann said.
In a year where typical get-out-the-vote tactics have been shelved or altered because of the coronavirus, both parties used the national platforms provided by their conventions in August to push the importance of voter registration during prime-time TV. Democrats, especially, are now urging people to make a plan for how they will cast their ballot.
“You know the stakes for your lives, for your futures, your planet,” Obama said in a video this week. “We’ve got to plan.”
Over the last few months, I’ve learned a thing or two from the young people in our country. I figured I would return the favor by sharing with you how to make a plan to vote in this upcoming election.
Get registered and vote early: https://t.co/Q5BUeMaOB5
Video: @attn pic.twitter.com/CNqjS7Dmxo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 16, 2020
Trump campaign spokeswoman Thea McDonald defended her team’s work educating people about their options and the rules that govern them, targeting early-voting states with ads.
“Voting in person has always been the most secure method, and we encourage all who can vote in person to do so on or before Election Day,” she said.
Friday’s early voting kickoff follows North Carolina this month, fulfilling its initial batch of roughly 619,000 absentee ballot requests, meaning the 2020 election season is in full swing.
