By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
More than 4 million Americans have already voted by mail ahead of the presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, an unprecedented number and sign of likely record turnout on November 3 when in-person voting will also feature.
Early voters this year are 50 times more than those who did at this time in 2016, and the number is expected to rise before Election Day, as the public sees that the stakes are particularly high this year, amplified by activists and celebrities
Americans are heeding the plea by activists such as Michele Obama, Barbara Streisand, and Megan Markle for them to troop out and vote.
Experts say mail-voting or absentee balloting – adopted by many of the 50 states in the United States – is generally free of fraud and reliable, but Trump scoffs at the system because he sees it as a threat to his reelection.
Democrats support mail voting, saying it allows everyone, including seniors, who are unable to vote at the polling booth to cast their ballot from the comfort of their homes.
But Republicans do not like mail voting, with the unfounded allegation that it encourages ballot fraud. They erect a slew of obstacles to the system, which Democrats describe as voter suppression.
Reuters reports that Republicans are mobilising thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes, part of an effort to find evidence to back up Trump’s unsubstantiated complaints about widespread voter fraud.
Across key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin, Republican poll watchers will be searching for irregularities, especially with regard to mail-in ballots whose use is surging amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to more than 20 officials involved in the effort.
They declined to say how many volunteers have signed up so far; the campaign earlier this year said its goal was to recruit 50,000 monitors nationwide.
The mission, the officials said, is to capture photos and videos Republicans can use to support so-far unfounded claims that mail voting is riddled with chicanery, and to help their case if legal disputes erupt over the results of the election.
Reasons for the rush to vote
The more than 4 million who have cast their ballots are more than 50 times the 75,000 at this time in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.
The shift has been driven by an expansion of early and mail-in voting in many states as a safe way to cast a ballot during the coronavirus pandemic and an eagerness to weigh in on the political future of Trump, said Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, who administers the project.
“We’ve never seen this many people voting so far ahead of an election,” McDonald said.
“People cast their ballots when they make up their minds, and we know that many people made up their minds long ago and already have a judgment about Trump.”
The early surge has led McDonald to predict a record turnout of about 150 million, representing 65 percent of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1908.
Biden leads Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in crucial battleground states indicate a tighter race.
The numbers reported so far come from 31 states, McDonald said, and will grow rapidly as more states begin early in-person voting and report absentee mail-in totals in the next few weeks.
All but about a half-dozen states allow some level of early in-person voting.
The percentage of voters who cast their ballot at a voting machine on Election Day already had been in steady decline before this year, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency.
The total number of early or mail-in votes more than doubled from nearly 25 million in 2004 to 57 million in 2016, it said, representing an increase from one in five of all ballots cast to two in five of all ballots cast.
Trump has railed against mail-in voting, making unfounded accusations that it leads to fraud. Experts have said such fraud is rare.
Those attacks by Trump have shown signs of depressing Republican interest in voting by mail.
Democrats have more than doubled the number of returned mail-in ballots by Republicans in seven states that report voter registration data by party, according to the Elections Project.
In the crucial battleground state of Florida, Democrats have requested more than 2.4 million mail-in ballots and returned 282,000, while Republicans have asked for nearly 1.7 million and returned more than 145,000.
A national Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last week found 5 per cent of Democrats nationwide said they had already voted compared to 2 per cent of Republicans.
About 58 per cent of Democrats planned to vote early compared to 40 per cent of Republicans.
McDonald said early voting typically starts strong, then drops before surging just ahead of the election. But in some states, rates of participation already have skyrocketed a month out.
In South Dakota, early voting this year already represents nearly 23 per cent of the total turnout in 2016. It is nearly 17 per cent of total 2016 turnout in Virginia and nearly 15 per cent of total 2016 turnout in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
“That’s just nuts,” McDonald said. “Every piece of data suggests very high turnout for this election. I think that’s just a given.”
