(C) Common Dreams
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How Policy Influenced the Partisan Divide over Voting by Mail [1]
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Date: 2024-11
The 2020 election opened up a big chasm between the parties in the use of mail-in ballots; 58% of Democrats voted by mail, compared to 29% of Republicans. In previous years, there was little-to-no partisan difference in voting by mail.
This partisan gap was stoked by the rhetoric of Donald Trump, who claimed that mail ballots were “out of control,” and that of his supporters, such as former Attorney General William Barr, who said that mail ballots would “open the floodgates to fraud.” State Republican leaders often followed suit, denying that there was anything special about the 2020 election that called for more liberal mail ballot laws. For instance, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick claimed expanding vote by mail for people under 65 to be ludacris, saying that, “people under 65 are more at risk of dying in a car wreck on the way to vote than they are from dying from contracting COVID-19 when voting.”
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats actively sought to expand opportunities for voters to cast ballots before Election Day. In her 2020 speech at the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama famously declared, “We’ve got to request our main-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow-up to make sure they’re received.” Democratic state officials with responsibility for running the election were often the most active and vocal in encouraging voting by mail. For instance, Jim Condos, Vermont’s Secretary of State, said that “voting by mail is simple, safe and secure” and was the obvious choice for 2020.
There were exceptions to these partisan divisions, to be sure. Washington’s Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman defended her state’s long history of mailing every registered voter a ballot and emphasized her confidence in the security measures in place for voting by mail.
Still, voting in person became the “Republican thing to do,” while voting by mail was seen as the Democratic opinion.
Partisan rhetoric wasn’t the only part of this story, however. Some states retained high barriers to using mail ballots while others made it easy, or at least easier than in the past. How did these policy choices contribute to the big difference in the usage rates of mail ballots by Republicans and Democrats in the midst of the partisan rhetoric that was swirling around?
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[1] Url:
https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/how-policy-influenced-partisan-divide-over-voting-mail
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