The US presidential election in 2020 is three months away and many Americans are wondering if they can send their vote through the postal service.
The US remains the country with the most confirmed cases of the coronavirus, as shown in the image below by Statista, with the highest number of deaths currently at 176,809. Of the confirmed cases, 1,997,761 were marked as recovered.
With schools reopening in places like Texas causing more reported cases, eyes are turning to the presidential election in November – an event in which some 138 million Americans voted in 2016.
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For those who would like to vote in person, emails are a safer alternative. According to the Brookings Institution, the safest and safest way to vote in a pandemic is to vote by mail.
However, there is confusion about which states will offer post-vote voting during the pandemic and whether the absent vote of their own state is the same. Newsweek check to see if there is a difference between post-in and absent votes.
Is there a difference between absenteeism and mail-in voting?
With some states using the terms differently, confusion arises as to whether an absent vote is the same as a mail-in. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in management studies and director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, told Newsweek that absent votes place the responsibility on the voter to apply.
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“The voter must apply for a ballot and if their application is approved, they will get a vote,” she explains. “In what is known as ‘Universal Mail-in Ballot States’, all registered voters automatically receive a vote.”
States such as Oregon, Washington, California and Hawaii have a universal postal voting system, which means that the majority, if not all, of the counties will send voter votes to residents when they register to vote.
So while not all U.S. states have an e-mail voting system, all states have absent voting rights. This means that a vote can be requested by a registered voter if they are unable to attend in person on election day. Reasons for this type of vote include:
- To be from the province where they are registered to vote
- Be a student living outside the province
- Having a disease as a disability
- Work as a jury member at voting hours
- Serves as election worker as poll warden
- Has religious beliefs as practices that prevent them from going to a polling center
- Sitting in jail but still able to vote
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Some states allow these types of voting without reason, known as a no-excuse absentee vote. These are:
- Alaska
- Arizona
- California
- Washington, DC
- Florida
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Maine
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Dakota
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, Kamarck advises state governments to send absentee ballot papers to all registered voters: “The most important thing they can do is email out,” she says. “This saves one step in the process.”
Kamarck also explains that the turnout of voters has increased with universal mail-in sending systems, which shows that this step could encourage people to vote.
Visit https://vote.gov/ to register to vote. Visit your State’s website to request a ballot.
Coronavirus data provided by Johns Hopkins University, unless otherwise indicated.
