Starting next week, early voting for the presidential election will be possible in many US states. In 2020, 70% of voters were able to cast their ballots before election day.
“A big scam” at the origin of “massive fraud”. In the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, which saw Joe Biden sweep away Donald Trump, Trump was full of criticism of the vote allegedly stolen from him. The former president had repeatedly insinuated, without supporting his remarks with any evidence, that mail-in voting had allowed Democrats to carry out ballot stuffing operations, leading them to win the election.
In his sights, the question of the voting procedure in the United States, where many states authorize postal voting. This solution allows Americans to vote without going to the polls by sending a postal ballot, or to vote well before the election deadline. Thus, North Carolina sent all the ballots to those requesting a postal vote as early as September 6. American citizens in this state will be able to vote from October 17.
And in Pennsylvania, State «swing state» Often referred to as the country’s political center of gravity, where Democrats and Republicans are neck and neck, citizens can vote starting September 16. That is almost two months before the national election deadline on November 5.
Complexity of US Elections
In the United States, this system of postal voting, whose legislation varies from state to state, was introduced during the Civil War to allow soldiers far from home to vote. It then experienced a strong boom in the 2000s, which can be explained in part by the complexity of American electoral deadlines. “In some American states, a ballot allows you to vote for the presidential election, but also for the composition of the Senate, for referendums in a city, for the composition of a municipal council…” lists Olivier Richomme, professor of American civilization at Lumière Lyon-2 University. “The queues at the ballot boxes are often as long as your arm”the specialist continues. Americans therefore appreciate the method of voting by mail, which allows them to choose who to vote for “from home, with a clear head”This practice also helps to remobilize the American electorate. “undermined by abstention”the researcher further explains.
Already in 2020, 70% of American voters had actually voted early in the American presidential election. Among them, 64 million had sent their ballot by mail. 35 million had gone to the polls before election day. In total, they were 34 million more than the entire early vote in the 2016 election, during which 43% of the votes had been cast before election day. A record increase in votes (66% turnout in total, or 6 percentage points more than in the previous election) which was largely explained by the health context: due to the Covid-19 pandemic, voters preferred voting by mail to voting in person on D-Day. In Pennsylvania, for example, more than 2.4 million voters (out of the 9 million registered) had voted before election day, 10 times more than in 2016. And the state was ultimately won by Joe Biden, after a very close race.
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“Illegal” practice according to Trump
At the time, however, while Democrats were strongly encouraging Americans to vote by mail, Donald Trump, on the other hand, spoke out against this electoral method. To the point of inviting his supporters in 2020 to vote twice – first by mail, then at a polling station, “to make sure that (their) voice counts, because the only way (the Democrats) can beat us is by doing these kinds of things”or resort to postal voting, a practice that he considered “illegal”he protested in an interview given to the WEC-TV channel on September 4, 2020. The former Republican president had thus contributed to equating, in the minds of his supporters, the concept of postal voting with electoral fraud. Before the 2020 election, 60% of Democratic voters announced that they wanted to choose this system, compared to only 29% for Republican voters, several polls announced.
A few months before the November 5, 2024 deadline, the Republican candidate finally seems to have decided to change his mind on this subject. “The Republicans must win and we will use every tool we have to defeat the Democrats, because they are destroying our country.”Donald Trump justified himself in a press release published at the beginning of June, thereby committing to “protect access to voting”. A turnaround that can be partly explained by the precedent of 2020. “Republican campaign organizers probably realized that discouraging this voting system cost them votes in 2020.”says Olivier Richomme. The outcome of the campaign is therefore being decided well before the deadline of November 5, and the holding of the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on September 10, “will already play a significant role among undecided voters” who will have the opportunity to vote from mid-September, the researcher added.
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