Early voting turnout high as nearly 47% of 2020 electorate cast ballots

To a striking extent, Americans are not waiting for Election Day to vote. More than 74 million people had already cast their ballots as of Saturday, which is nearly 47 percent the total number cast in the 2020 presidential election.

That includes 4 million voters in Georgia - or 80 percent of the total that voted there in 2020. In the battlegrounds of Arizona and North Carolina, roughly half of eligible voters have already shown up. And in three states - Connecticut, Delaware and South Carolina - early voting has surpassed 2020 levels.

This surge of early voting suggests that a long-term trend that was accelerated by the pandemic during the 2020 election has led to a lasting change in voting habits, with Election Day increasingly subsumed by Election Season.

“Election Day is just the end of voting now,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “We have many election days and it’s just the final day on which ballots can be cast.”

While nationwide rates of early voting aren’t quite as high as they were at this time in 2020, they’re significantly higher than in 2016 or any previous election year. Some have been surprised by the turnout, especially after former president Donald Trump and many Republicans spent years falsely asserting that early and mail voting was less reliable than voting on Election Day. This year, Trump has shown more openness to early voting, especially in the final days of campaigning.

In interviews, voters throughout the country said they liked being able to choose when to vote to ensure they had enough time in case there were long lines. By doing so, they avoided the chance that bad weather, an illness or a busy workday on Tuesday would keep them from getting to polling locations. The booming interest in voting early may also reflect the nature of the presidential race, where the polls have barely budged for weeks and many voters don’t need to hear more from the candidates to make up their minds.

“This way I can get it done earlier and get it done with,” Terri Ellis, 71, said after casting her ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday in Marshall, Wisconsin.

Chris Loeser, a machinist in Houston’s eastern suburbs, was on his way to work Friday when he passed an early voting site at a community center and noticed the parking lot was half empty and there was no line.

“I said, ‘Let’s take advantage of this,’” said Loeser, 53, who voted for Trump for a third time.

The number of early vote ballots is expected to continue rising before Election Day. In recent rallies in battleground states, Trump and Harris have implored their supporters and undecided voters to cast their ballots early.

Voting rules differ widely by state. Some allow weeks of in-person early voting, some automatically mail ballots to all registered voters and some tightly limit when a voter can cast a ballot before Election Day.

As recently as the 1990s, nine in 10 voters cast their ballots on Election Day, Burden said. Since then, a number of states have changed their voting laws to make it easier to vote early, and now tens of millions of voters cast their ballots in the weeks leading up to Election Day, either in person or by mail.

Barack Obama encouraged his backers to vote early when he first ran for president in 2008, and other campaigns soon embraced the strategy because it allowed them to lock down their supporters’ votes and concentrate their get-out-the-vote efforts on undecided voters. Now, voters in red, blue and purple states are taking advantage of the chance to cast ballots before Election Day.

The coronavirus pandemic changed voting patterns in 2020 much as it disrupted other parts of life. Voters turned to mail voting in unprecedented numbers as they tried to avoid contact with others. This year, voters are again casting ballots early, but are doing it more often in person than by mail, Burden said.

Trump for years has disparaged mail voting and instead has championed voting on Election Day, even as other Republicans have urged his supporters to vote early. Trump in recent weeks has offered mixed messages. At a rally in suburban Detroit last weekend, Trump promoted early voting while calling Michigan’s early voting system “ridiculous” and praising France for holding elections without early voting.

In battleground Wisconsin, 1.3 million voters had cast ballots in person or by mail as of Friday. That’s less than the 1.7 million who had turned out at the same stage in 2020. Far more voters this time are casting ballots in person instead of by mail.

“Citizens love early voting, whether it’s by mail or in-person absentee voting, and we’ve seen an increase every presidential election,” said Claire Woodall, a former elections director for Milwaukee who is now a senior adviser to the nonprofit group Issue One.

Craig Oran, 43, needed only a few minutes to cast his ballot for Harris on Thursday in Marshall, a small town about 15 miles from Madison, Wisconsin. The graphic designer said he wanted to beat Election Day crowds and thinks voting in person is more secure than voting by mail. He felt confident in that theory after an arsonist placed an incendiary device on a ballot drop box and burned hundreds of ballots this week in Vancouver, Washington.

While Republicans have touted early voting, they have raised questions about problems that can emerge with the practice. In Minnesota, they seized on a photograph that circulated online showing ballots in boxes sitting unattended in a parked courier’s vehicle with an open trunk. Hennepin County officials said the ballot boxes remained sealed and had not been tampered with, and the courier had been terminated.

“I think it’s going to continue to cause contention because it’s such a vivid image of Hennepin County not taking appropriate precautions,” said Anna Mathews, executive director of the state Republican Party.

In pivotal Arizona, where early voting has been overwhelmingly popular for decades, about 2.2 million ballots had been received as of Friday. That means about half of eligible voters have already shown up.

Around Maricopa County, a swing area home to most of the state’s voters, jovial people walked into churches, schools and community centers to vote early. Voting behaviors largely mirrored pre-pandemic trends, when Republicans dominated early voting.

In Maricopa County, turnout this week surpassed 2016 turnout significantly and was nearing 2020 levels, according to elections director Scott Jarrett. “We have had the most in-person early voters than we’ve ever had at this stage of the election cycle,” Jarrett said.

Republicans, who hold a registration advantage in the state, were outpacing early ballot returns compared with four years ago, while Democrats were behind their 2020 turnout so far, according to data tracked by Phoenix-based Democratic consultant Sam Almy. Independents were behind their 2020 early turnout.

Republican consultant Paul Bentz said the early enthusiasm demonstrated how consumer behaviors that have shaped online shopping and near-instant food deliveries have spilled over into voting: “It has become part of not only convenience but habit - particularly for our older voters.” He said Republican voters are also responding to relentless GOP messaging that urges supporters to vote early.

“It’s a return to form for Republicans in the state and Republicans are listening,” Bentz said.

Among them was Dominic Multari, a Phoenix Republican who is convinced the 2020 election was rigged against Trump despite independent reviews and court decisions finding it was conducted properly. After Trump gave the green light to vote before Tuesday, the 75-year-old retired city worker decided to give it a go on Friday. The process, he said, was smooth and he’s confident that his vote will be properly counted. “There are way too many eyes looking at the process and I think it will go through honestly,” he said. “I’m hoping.”

Yuleisi Hardy, a Republican who immigrated from Cuba, voted for the first time in an American election in Phoenix on Friday. Taking a cue from Trump, she opted to turn in her ballot early - and it was easy to squeeze in a trip to a church that opened its doors as a polling location as she went about her day.

“My vote will count,” said Hardy, 45, as she stuck an “I voted” sticker on her shirt. Hardy said she hopes for “good results” and a “clean election.”

In-person early voting is new in Michigan. Two years ago, voters by a wide margin approved a measure that requires local governments to make in-person early voting available for at least nine days. Detroit and two other communities expanded the window.

Officials in the swing state have said their first presidential election with early voting was a success. As of Saturday, about 2.8 million Michigan residents had cast ballots, including about 880,000 who voted early in person. Together, the in-person and mail ballots are equal to about half the number of total votes cast in the state in 2020.

In Pennsylvania, another political battleground, there is no traditional early voting, but voters may request and cast mail ballots in person before Election Day. As of Saturday, voters had turned in 1.7 million ballots, with about 56 percent from Democrats, 33 percent from Republicans and 11 percent from unaffiliated or third-party voters.

Republican officials urged voters to show up at election offices to request ballots but many counties were unprepared to handle so many requests. Frustration spread as voters complained they had to wait hours to vote.

At one elections office outside Philadelphia on Tuesday, the last day to request a mail ballot in person, a Bucks County staffer told people waiting in line that the office might close before they got a chance to vote. The Trump campaign sued the vote-rich swing county, and a judge extended the deadline until Friday.

In deep-blue Maryland, where Democrats must hold an open Senate seat to have any hope of keeping control of the chamber, early turnout has been more robust than ever. Nearly a quarter of registered voters cast ballots during the state’s eight-day early voting period. Including returned mail-in ballots, 37 percent of Maryland voters had cast ballots as of Thursday evening.

Early voting programs provide an outlet for ardent voters to express their support for candidates - but it doesn’t necessarily lead to more voting overall, said Burden of the Elections Research Center in Wisconsin.

“I don’t think it’s generating many new voters,” Burden said. “The research suggests these are mostly people changing their method and timing of voting, but they are not people who otherwise would sit home.”

Colby Itkowitz and Erin Cox contributed to this report.