First US Presidential Ballot Sent to Voters … Voting Process Initiation

The United States began mailing a ballot to the state of North Carolina on November 4 (local time) and initiated administrative proceedings for the presidential election on November 3.

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party held a convention last month, officially naming President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as presidential candidates, respectively, and the elections have now begun to distribute ballots.

According to foreign media such as the Associated Press, North Carolina is the first of the 50 states in the United States to begin sending presidential ballots to voters as of this day.

The voting method for the US Presidential elections is divided into ballot-by-mail, early ballot-in-place, and voting-in-place on Election Day. Voters can vote the ballot and mail it to the elections office. Early voting at the site begins September 18 in Minnesota, Wyoming and South Dakota.

In particular, this year, due to the epidemic of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19), the tendency to reluctance to vote in the place is expected to increase, and it is expected that there will be more voters by mail than ever.

US public radio NPR said most analysts expect at least half of voters to participate in early voting or by mail.

In fact, so far 643,000 voters in North Carolina have applied to vote by mail, which is 17 times the number of 39,000 voters during the 2016 presidential election. Voters in North Carolina can request a vote by mail before the 27th. next month.

The number of vote-by-mail applicants in Florida, which was 3.34 million four years ago, is 4.27 million.

The state of Michigan had 350,000 absentee ballot applications in 2016, but since then, more than 2 million people have submitted applications so far this year, allowing anyone to vote by mail.

There are observations that voting by mail will be beneficial to the Democratic Party, as the preference for voting by mail and voting in place is clearly different for each supporting party.

In a poll conducted last month by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Trump’s support for President Trump was 11%, but Biden’s support for the Candidate reached 47%.

In fact, among voters applying to vote by mail in North Carolina so far, the Democratic Party has the highest number of supporters with 337,000, 200,000 nonpartisan, and 100,000 Republican supporters. It is an assessment that contrasts with the former Republican base of support.

In Maine, 60% of mail-in vote applicants were Democrats and 22% were nonpartisan. Florida also has 48% Democratic supporters and 32% Republican supporters. In Pennsylvania, 68% of Democrats are supported, while 24% of Republicans are.

The AP assessed that the difference in preference for voting by mail among supporters was influenced by President Trump’s assertion that voting by mail was vulnerable to irregular elections, and that the low turnout rate of Republican supporters suggests that these supporters are listening to President Trump.

However, he said that the superiority of the Democratic Party in voting by mail is not necessarily interpreted as superiority in electoral results, and that voting at the site on Election Day is likely to be overwhelmingly pro-Republican.

Consequently, it is predicted that if the ballot in place is counted first on Election Day, President Trump will lead the ballot, and if mail-in votes are counted sequentially, candidate Biden will win.

Tom Bonnier, chief executive of Target Smart, the Democratic Party’s data analytics agency, said this year there is a promising indicator for the Democratic Party. So far, 16% of applicants to vote by mail are voters who did not vote in 2016 and are younger than regular voters by mail. The intention is that he is probably a supporter of the Democratic Party.

The AP also noted that the presidential camp expected supporters to participate in the vote-by-mail, but the situation for Republicans this year is different.

When supporters first voted by mail, the presidential field concentrated resources to send the remaining supporters to the polls on Election Day, but this year, President Trump repeatedly criticized voting by mail, complicating this effort in the case. of the Republicans.

[연합뉴스]

Copyright ⓒ Yonhap News. Unauthorized reproduction and redistribution prohibited