Lol. In my very conservative state (UT), it’s incredibly easy to do mail voting, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t count for the majority of votes this election.
Elections staff across Utah have processed nearly 829,000 ballots as of Monday morning, according to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.
That’s 46.2% of the ballots mailed to Utah’s 1.8 million registered voters, she said in a post on X.
Early voter turnout was higher in 2020, Henderson added — about 54.1% of voters had returned ballots the Friday before that election.
And from 2020 election:
Trump - 865,140
Biden - 560,282
So almost as many people have voted early this election as voted for the winner in 2020. So there’s a good chance we’ll cross the 50% threshold again this election if we get another 4%-ish to drop off their ballots today. I imagine a number will drop them off at polling places tomorrow as well instead of actually going into the booth to vote, but I don’t think those count for the statistics here.
So at least in my very red state, mail voting is super popular. I have actually never voted in person, every vote has been by mail or early voting. It’s super nice.
I always appreciate stats, so point taken. That said, Utah isn’t a major swing state where we expect these efforts to take place.
Republicans have been trying to minimize the blue shift in swing states by rejecting as many mail-in ballots as possible for a variety of reasons.
In the 2020 presidential contest, Pennsylvania election officials rejected more than 34,000 mail ballots. In a tight 2024 election in the most coveted swing state, even a fraction of that many rejections could spell the difference between victory and defeat — not just in the presidential race, but also in any number of others.
What’s true in Pennsylvania is true, to varying degrees, in other battleground states. Michigan rejected more than 20,000 mail ballots in 2020 and even more in 2022; Arizona turned down 7,700; Nevada 5,600; and Wisconsin about 3,000.
Agreed. My point is that this isn’t really a conservative/Republican thing, at least not broadly across the US. It’s simply a strategy to win close states.
Lol. In my very conservative state (UT), it’s incredibly easy to do mail voting, and I would be surprised if it doesn’t count for the majority of votes this election.
Some details about this election and 2020 election (updated as of this morning):
And from 2020 election:
So almost as many people have voted early this election as voted for the winner in 2020. So there’s a good chance we’ll cross the 50% threshold again this election if we get another 4%-ish to drop off their ballots today. I imagine a number will drop them off at polling places tomorrow as well instead of actually going into the booth to vote, but I don’t think those count for the statistics here.
So at least in my very red state, mail voting is super popular. I have actually never voted in person, every vote has been by mail or early voting. It’s super nice.
I always appreciate stats, so point taken. That said, Utah isn’t a major swing state where we expect these efforts to take place.
Republicans have been trying to minimize the blue shift in swing states by rejecting as many mail-in ballots as possible for a variety of reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/us/election-mail-in-ballot-rejection.html
And they want to reject provisional ballots…
https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/11/us-supreme-court-allows-pennsylvania-to-count-provisional-votes-for-defective-mail-in-ballots/
And military ballots …
https://apnews.com/article/overseas-voters-military-ballots-election-2024-republicans-a275299f6828ec0f54133ea5614ca0df
If the advantage shifts because of women voting in private, I believe we will see Republicans take effort to make in-person voting more difficult.
Agreed. My point is that this isn’t really a conservative/Republican thing, at least not broadly across the US. It’s simply a strategy to win close states.