U.S Early Ballots Hit 90 million Friday
Few days to the U.S Presidential Election, the number of early votes for Tuesday’s has hit 90 million, with 53 million ballots coming as drop-box mail votes.
Of the 240 million U.S eligible voters, experts estimate a 158 million turnout in this year’s crucial elections.
In what appears a strong motivation for change, over 20 million more Americans are expected to vote in 2020 than in 2016.
Speaking to a handful of international journalists on integrity of the 2020 election, as it relates to mail-in voting, Executive Director and Founder, Centre for Election Innovation and Research at Washington DC, David Becker, said, “Most people are returning those (mail) ballots much earlier than expected.”
At the ongoing 2020 US Presidential Election Reporting Seminar virtually taking place in Florida, it was gathered that more than 90 million people would have cast their ballots in early votes by Saturday morning.
“There are great numbers of early voting, representing more than 60 percent of expected votes. This is the highest in America’s history”, said Becker.
Becker disclosed that a “great number of voters are using this method of returning their ballots in-person. With the window still open until Sunday, more than 53 million “good ballots” have already been recorded from mail-in voters as at 4pm on Friday.
“We do not see high turnout of voters to keep things the same,” Becker said, expecting the final numbers to favour Biden.
“It is very rare to see high turnout election where people are saying, “Please keep things as they are,” he concluded.
According to Becker, the U.S. has been doing mail voting in the last 200 years. He said that the only difference was the move to expand the process across states as a result of the pandemic. He specifically noted that California, with the highest voting numbers in the U.S., was already becoming a mail voting state before the new campaign.
Explaining that some states, like Washington DC and Colorado, do send mail ballots to citizens on every election event, even without official request, Becker wondered how vote-by-mail became such a huge controversy.He blamed President Trump for politically stirring the hornet’s nest in his criticism of the process amid COVID-19 concerns.
Although all swing states — including Ohio that was won by President Trump in 2016 — have been deploying mail voting, New Jersey, Nevada and California, states were expanding the process this year.
