In 20 states, absentee voting still requires an excuse, down from 37 in 1992. However, seven of those 20 states offer one or more other forms of nontraditional voting as well. Today, 38 states offer one or more types of nontraditional voting beyond the traditional absentee voting with an excuse, more than twice as many as in 1992.
Many states now offer early voting, which lets voters go to an elections office (or, in some cases, a satellite voting location) and cast their vote with no excuse necessary. With Massachusetts offering early voting for the first time this year, 21 states and the District now offer some type of early voting — seven times as many as in 1992.
More recently, however, some states have scaled back their early voting periods. In 2014, for example, Ohio cut its early-voting period from 35 days to 29 days before Election Day, in the process eliminating a six-day period (called 'Golden Week') in which voters could register and vote early all in one trip; earlier this year, a federal appeals panel upheld that change. North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Nebraska are among other states that have limited early voting in the past few years.
Another type of nontraditional voting, generally referred to as "in-person absentee" voting, resembles early voting. But unlike early voting, which allows all qualified voters to vote during a specific time window before Election Day, in-person absentee voting allows absentee voters (excused or no-excuse) to fill out and drop off their absentee ballots in person, rather than through the mail, at any time prior to Election Day.
Although in-person absentee voting was available in Idaho, Iowa and some other states prior to 1992, this option didn’t gain steam until the 1990s. Combining in-person absentee voting and early voting as one category, 34 states and D.C. offer some form of pre-Election Day voting.
In seven states and DC, voters can apply to be added to a "permanent absentee" voter list, in which they automatically receive mail ballots for future elections. Hawaii first offered permanent absentee voting in 1975 (along with early voting), and other states followed in the 1990s and 2000s.
Three states – Oregon, Washington and now Colorado – have gone one step further and enacted vote-by-mail systems for all elections. In vote-by-mail states, all registered voters receive their ballots in the mail several weeks before Election Day; voters can fill out their ballots at their leisure and either mail them back or drop them off at designated collection points at any time up to the close of Election Day. Oregon pioneered this method when it went all-mail in 2000 (although it held smaller, local all-mail elections as far back as 1981). Washington and Colorado followed suit in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Officials in California also have discussed the possibility of the Golden State going all-mail.
Unlike most democracies around the world, the U.S. doesn’t have a single, centrally administered electoral system. States and localities vary widely in how they run their elections, define terms and collect and report data, which poses a challenge to researchers. As a 2006 report from the American Enterprise Institute noted, "[g]etting an accurate picture of absentee and early voting is a very difficult task, especially given the great variety of state and local election and reporting practices."
We used a combination of sources to produce our estimates. Besides the AEI study, we relied for the most part on reports published by the US Election Assistance Commission following the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections (the commission was created in 2002). Those reports compiled data reported by state elections authorities to the EAC shortly after the November election. Where those data were missing, inconclusive or contradictory, we went back to the individual state election authorities to try to fill in as many gaps as possible. Though our findings are necessarily approximations, we sought to survey the nontraditional voting landscape in the U.S. over the last quarter-century as accurately as possible.
According to figures compiled by voting and turnout expert Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, nearly 4.3 million votes already have been cast, either by mail or in person. If the recent past is any guide, that figure is likely to rise steeply as Election Day draws nearer.
The greater significance of early, absentee and mail voting has prompted campaigns to shift their standard strategies, ramping up their get-out-the-vote efforts earlier and closely tracking individual voters until the moment they submit their ballots. As one Ohio strategist commented on his blog, "It helps to look at the day that absentee voting starts as Election Day."
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