Early voting reaches record levels in the United States

It is the issue that has taken over the last stretch of the campaign. Less than a week before the presidential elections are held on November 3, many states are already posting historic early voting levels as people cast their votes as a result of the pandemic.

Many states, says The Wall Street Journal, have already received more early votes than the 2016 election at this point in the campaign. At the national level, early voting for general elections has already surpassed those of four years ago, when 58.8 million people cast early votes in person or by mail.

It is estimated that almost 67 million people have already cast their vote, out of a total of 230 million registered voters. Almost half of them have done so in states considered competitive, such as Pennsylvania, where Trump prevailed in 2016.

Nationally, voters have already cast about 46% of the total votes counted in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project.

For President Donald Trump this type of voting can lead to “fraud.” And what’s more, this Tuesday he urged voters who have already sent their ballots to annul their early vote and support his candidacy on the day of the elections.

This situation has led to a great uncertainty if the results will be known the same night of November 3. Votes at the polls are counted automatically and in most cases the results are announced within hours or even minutes after the polls close.

But voting by mail is a labor-intensive process, in which each state has its own rules. Some states only accept votes that go until Election Day, others continue to count votes for up to 10 days later.

Due to the burden this places on the Postal Service, some states have lengthened the period in which they will accept votes.

According to the average number of polls carried out by the Real Clear Politics site, Joe Biden leads national polls by a difference of 7.4 points above Trump.