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More than 50 million Americans have cast their votes in the U.S. presidential election with 11 days left in the campaign, a pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in more than a century, according to data from the Elections Project. from the United States on Friday.
The staggering number is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Republican Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, as well as the desire of Americans to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000. people. in the U.S.
Many states have expanded early voting in person and mail-in ballots before Election Day on November 3, as a safer way to vote during the coronavirus pandemic.
The high level of early voting has led Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who administers the US Elections Project, to predict a record turnout of around 150 million, representing 65% of voters eligible, the highest rate since 1908.
In Texas, the level of voting already exceeded 70% of total turnout in 2016. In Georgia, some have waited in line for more than 10 hours to cast their votes. And Wisconsin has seen a record number of early votes, with 1.1 million people returning their ballots as of this week. Voters in Virginia, Ohio and Georgia have also seen long lines at early voting locations.
The pandemic has disrupted campaign traditions and its effects are still being felt. Americans can find themselves waiting days or weeks to find out who won while election officials count tens of millions of votes by mail. Democrats are encouraging supporters to vote early, either in person or by mail, amid fears that the United States Postal Service (USPS) may not have the ability to deliver ballots by mail to election officials at weather.
Ongoing Republican efforts to restrict which votes are counted and how they have also concerned advocates of the right to vote. This week, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama officials to ban curbside voting. The Iowa supreme court also upheld a Republican-backed law that could prevent election officials from mailing thousands of ballots by making it harder for auditors to correct voter requests with missing information.
Michael Herron, a government professor at Dartmouth, and Daniel A Smith, a political scientist at the University of Florida, estimated that thousands of ballots in the swing states of Florida and North Carolina have been flagged for possible rejection due to signature defects. “Racial minorities and Democrats are disproportionately likely to have cast votes by mail in these elections and face rejection,” they wrote in The Conversation news outlet.
Trump and Biden met Thursday night for a final debate before Election Day, and Snap polls taken later showed that the majority of viewers believed Biden was the best performer.
Lagging behind in national polls, the president has kept a busy schedule of rallies, though with many voters already casting their votes, it’s unclear what effect the boost will have.
On Friday, the president held events in the battlefield state of Florida, where opinion polls show a tight race and more than 4 million votes have already been cast, approaching half the total four years ago.
When Trump asked the crowd how many had voted, “almost all hands” went up, reported NBC’s Shannon Pettypiece, who was at the event.
Next week, Trump will head to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and, surprisingly, Nebraska. He won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1 point in 2016, and recent polls show that Biden advanced several points in the battle states.
Meanwhile, Biden delivered a speech in his home state of Delaware about his plans to lead the recovery from the pandemic. Biden’s speech comes as the U.S. has hit its highest single-day coronavirus case count since late July, reporting 71,671 new cases yesterday.
“This president doesn’t have a plan yet,” Biden said. “He has given up. He abandoned you. He resigned from America. “
Echoing his remarks during the debate Thursday night, Biden said he would not shut down the country in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am not going to close the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to kill the virus, ”Biden said in Wilmington.
