DETROIT – There was a time, believe it or not, when absentee ballots tended to favor Republicans. Early in the morning after the historically close 1960 election, NBC-TV announced that John F. Kennedy had won California and the election.
Richard Nixon, his opponent, said he switched off his TV set in disgust. “I knew what any observer of California political trends should have known – that the absentee ballots would put the state in our column.” He was right about that, though later that morning he still lost the election, when Kennedy won Minnesota and Illinois.
Back then, and for years afterwards, those casting absentee ballots tended to be older and more affluent — executives on business trips, those on cruises or vacation, and they were heavily Republican.
But not anymore.
For years, the world of voting has been changing. In five states – Hawaii, Oregon, Colorado, Washington and Utah – virtually all voting is by mail. In California, most people vote that way.
For years, many states have gradually been making it easier to vote by mail, the way most absentee ballots are sent in.
Two years ago, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved allowing anyone to get an absentee ballot who wants one – something now true in the vast majority of states. The demographics of those voting absentee has been changing too. Now, many are cast by younger people on the move, who tend to vote Democratic.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic, and worries that voting in person might not be safe. Suddenly, millions of voters who had been happy to stand in line at their polling place were nervous. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent absentee ballot applications to all of Michigan’s 7.7 million registered voters for the state’s August primary election.
Two million voters asked for absentee ballots, and 1.6 million sent them in, outnumbering the 900,000 who voted in person. This November, Benson expects more than three million absentee ballots will be cast, more than half the total.
But is that wise?
Michigan Republicans were outraged, and tried to get the courts to prevent the Secretary of State from sending the ballot applications, but failed. President Trump attacked Benson, said what she did was unconstitutional, and then tweeted that “mail-in voting would lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History.”
President Trump however, regularly votes by mail, and studies have found essentially no evidence of fraud anywhere. An exhaustive Washington Post survey found only 372 questionable ballots out of 14.6 million votes cast by mail in 2016 and 2018.
There is, however, considerable evidence that voting by mail increases turnout, and the higher the turnout, the better Democrats tend to do. Colorado was a safe Republican state in Presidential elections as late as 2004, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama easily won it in the last three elections. That’s been even truer for Oregon and Washington.
It is virtually certain that the nation will see a far greater number of absentee ballots this November than ever in history. Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C. changed their rules to make it easier to cast ballots earlier or vote absentee. The only states remaining that have restrictions on absentee voting are all safe Republican states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Indiana, and South Carolina, plus Texas, which leans heavily to the GOP.
But there are two other big questions this year: Will absentee ballots sent through the mail get there in time? While many states require only that absentee ballots are postmarked by Election Day, Michigan requires them to be received before the polls close.
As a result, about 6,400 ballots in August weren’t counted because they arrived too late. (Another 4,000 were rejected for various reasons, such as voters forgetting to sign their ballots, or had sent them and then died before the election.)
Still, less than one percent of all Michigan absentee ballots were invalid. But election officials are urging absentee voters to either mail them at least two weeks before the election or take them directly to their local city hall or clerk’s office.
There’s also considerable worry as to whether all these mail-in votes can be processed in time to get results on Election Night. There was little delay in Michigan in August, except in Detroit, and complete results were available by noon the next day.
November will be harder, however, and unlike many other states, clerks are forbidden to count absentee ballots before Election Day. The legislature is expected to change the law for this election only to allow the envelopes to be opened and the absentees prepared for counting, but that may not be enough.
The state is also dispatching extra election workers to Detroit to help with the November election.
Whatever happens, mail-in voting is likely here to stay. Oregon, the first state to go to an all-vote by mail system, has not only figured out how to conduct these elections smoothly – it saves millions every election, since the state no longer has to operate and staff thousands of polling places. Other mail-in states report similar results.
However, that all could hinge on what happens nationally on Nov. 3 – and how long it takes to get results. The results of some primary elections in other states this year weren’t known for weeks.
And there may be other glitches; in Michigan, several hundred absentee ballots were apparently sent to citizens in the military or living abroad that showed Libertarian Jeremy “Spike” Cohen as President Trump’s running mate, not Mike Pence.
You can bet there are a lot of election officials who will face Nov. 3 with fingers firmly crossed.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
