Press. voanews.com.
Early in-person voting for the U.S. presidential election is underway in
several states, including the battleground states of Florida and Colorado. Polling places opened Monday in 50 counties
in Florida, including the state’s largest counties — Broward, Duval,
Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach. In Colorado, early voting
centers opened Monday morning in all 64 counties across the state. Also Monday, polling places began opening in
Alaska, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Texas.
Vote by mail
Early voting by mail has been underway for weeks in many states.
However, in-person early voting recently began in some states, allowing people
to travel to voting centers to cast their ballots, in much the same way as
voting on Election Day. So far, more than 5 million ballots have been cast.
Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia offer some in-person
early voting, while many others allow absentee mail-in voting without having to
provide an excuse for not being able to come to the polls.
Three states, Oregon, Washington and now Colorado, have enacted a
vote-by-mail system in which all registered voters receive their ballots in the
mail several weeks before Election Day. Voters can then mail their ballots back
or drop them off at designated collection points through Election Day.
More voters opt to vote early
In 1996, about 10 percent of voters used an alternative voting methods,
either voting early or casting absentee ballots, according to U.S. Census data.
Four years ago, in the last presidential election, that figure had tripled, to
nearly 33 percent.
And in some individual states, that number is much higher. More than
half of the ballots cast in the 2012 election in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, North
Carolina, Montana, New Mexico and Tennessee were either early or absentee,
according to Pew researchers.
Unlike most democracies, the U.S. does not have a centrally administered
electoral system, meaning each state — and in some cases, even each county —
determines how and when residents can vote.
Absentee voting began more than a century ago during the American Civil
War, as a way for soldiers in combat to send their ballots back home. By the
mid-20th century, most states had adopted some form of absentee voting,
although it was restricted, usually requiring specific evidence that a voter
was unable to cast a ballot in person on Election Day.
California, Oregon and Washington were among the first states in the
1970s and 1980s to allow voters to choose to cast absentee ballots without
providing a specific reason. Today, 27 states and the District of Columbia
allow “no excuse” absentee voting for their residents.
Regardless of how or where they vote, more and more Americans are acting
early on their electoral choices. This has begun to alter political parties’
traditional campaign exhortations for everyone to get out and vote on Election
Day.
Apart from the convenience early voting offers to most people, the trend
can either help or hurt candidates whose campaigns peak just before Election
Day. Campaign rhetoric during the last weeks before voting day this year will
have relatively little or no effect on large numbers of voters.
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