Early Voting Stampede
Mail balloting is fueling a Historic Early Voting in the 2020 Election
- Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia have already received more early ballots than they did in the 2016 presidential election.
- Election officials already talk about “Election Week” rather than “Election Day” and urge voters to see a lengthy count in close contests as normal.
- Virginia, one of the first states to open early in-person voting sites, topped 2016 levels for both categories of advance voting in the first week it reported numbers. More than 977,000 ballots have been cast in the state, with slightly more early in-person ballots being cast than mail-in votes.
- In Florida, which has 29 Electoral College votes, about 1.7 million mail ballots have been cast, more than 60% of those received in 2016.
- In North Carolina, 192,000 ballots were cast by mail in 2016 compared with more than 483,000 so far.
- In Georgia, voters reported waiting in line for hours on the first day of early, in-person voting, when the secretary of state’s office said a record 126,876 people voted.
- Michigan officials said 978,000 early votes have already been cast, about 76% of the total 2016 advance vote and more than three times the number cast through the same time four years ago.
- In Pennsylvania, more early ballots have been cast than in either the 2016 or 2018 general elections. More than 385,000 mail-in ballots had been received by election officials out of more than 2.6 million that have been requested.
- So far, at least 11 states have already reached or exceeded 50% of their total early vote in 2016. Four have surpassed those levels.
Spotlight Georgia
Problems in Four States
Ballot Counting
Michigan and Wisconsin do not start counting early voting until election day.
If those states are needed to declare a winner, there will not be a winner election evening.
Polling Impact
One of the biggest challenges for pollsters is estimating turnout.
The most accurate surveys are of likely voters, not registered voters.
But someone who has already voted is a “sure thing”.
If a “likely” voter is 85% likely to vote, a “sure thing” is 100%.
Pollsters should place more weight on “already voted” than likely, but none of them do.
What About Uncounted Votes?
Trump has made it clear he is willing to do anything he can to disrupt mail-in votes.
There will be court challenges and no one can say for sure how those challenges would stand up if the election is close.
The surge in vote-by-mail will also lead to errors. Ballots whose signatures do not match official records will get tossed.
No one can say what the error rate will be, but Democrats will have far more votes challenged than Republicans if for no other reason that more Democrats will vote by mail.
What to Make of It?
Trump brags about the number of people at his rallies.
The silent majority waits in line 8 hours to vote for Biden.
I strongly suspect pollsters bending over backwards to prevent a 2016 error again will have underestimated support for Biden.
Mish
Maybe people read about the army of Trump’s Sturmabteilung that are being trained to disrupt the polls on election day.
I suspect that die-hard right wing news followers are going to have a big wake-up call on election day, based on some of the comments here.
I don’t understand why people keep following news sources that spin or outright lie to them. COVID is no worse than the flu? The polls are wrong and Trump will win? What will it take for people stop believing what these guys are saying?
Death
“What to make of the voting stampede”
Maybe people realise the virus is on its way again and they want to vote before the ability to do so is affected by new restrictions. Unfortunately it’s inevitable as we’re finding out in Europe.
My wife and I are doing mail in voting because my wife is high risk. I’m going to wait until just before election day to vote since, with 2 elderly candidates, there’s a chance one or both may not make it to election day. When I’ve voted in person on election day, I don’t think I ever waited more than 5 minutes. Why are people waiting in line for hours?
On my ballot, everyone with a (D) next to their name will win, except for our governor. Amazing he wins in a state where all but one electorate is a democrat. A reflection of how the democrats have gerrymandered my state. So my vote won’t matter.
It’s very interesting to see the electorate swing in the Democrat’s/Biden’s favor. This election will also reveal whether the GOP is headed towards a regional party status instead of a national party, Texas in play and Arizona looking increasingly a Biden state. Also very interesting that neither the GOP nor the Dems are discussing taxes/reducing spending(two sides of the same coin).
The nation as a whole for the most part has turned fully to leveraging the reserve currency status of the dollar to keep the party going. This is a huge shift and the groundwork/foundation for socialism is being laid, both by the GOP and Dem deficit spending. The nation as a whole embraces this and wants it no matter the party, that is the real reason Trump is going to lose because he is endangering the existing system(which most want to keep going no matter what they say), I expect seniors who are the biggest recipients of the welfare state to swing to Biden in big numbers.
I looked at a tax evaluation put out by a very expensive accounting firm I used to use….(I fired them but I’m still on the email list)…it looks like Biden is going to raise taxes on anybody who makes more than $400K by reducing personal itemized deductions….
Other than that I didn’t see much that’s different between Trump and Biden on taxes.
Too soon to know which way the electorate is swinging. I’ve read that 5% of people who will vote for Trump will publicly say they’re voting for Biden. For obvious reasons.
And how many will say they are voting for Trump to keep the peace, but pull the lever for Biden? Cuts both ways.
Out of curiosity, what are the obvious reasons?
Saying you’re going to vote for one and then voting for the other doesn’t seem like something common to me. I can understand a percentage doing this if they are living in an area that is ‘opposite’ their natural political leanings — but I would think this would happen on both sides of the aisle, not just one.
So you don’t think we are currently socialist already ? What do you call central bank bailouts to businesses on the order of $10T over the last decade ?
We are definitely socialist, especially at the mega corporate level, socialize the losses , privatize the wins, with other smatterings of socialist programs such as Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security/etc.
We are entering a new era due to the government financial actions taken during the COVID crisis, teh socialism now will be extended to individual citizens and individual non too big to fail businesses. The doors have been opened and no amount of taxes can raise enough revenue for the programs that are coming down such as direct cash transfers/UBI type programs, hence it will be done via deficit spending on the back of having a reserve currency. There is no other way, the door has been opened on the government handing out money to citizens due to “economic conditions” it’s a threshold that has been passed and nothing can put that horse in the barn, and neither party GOP or Democrat is even suggesting putting it back in. Nor do most citizens want it either, in other words ,we have found we can vote ourselves directly into more money and we will now do so, the last remaining moral strings holding us back from doing so as individual citizens are now gone.
Place your bets accordingly, and yeah if you are middle class and are still playing the “I want to be a good citizen card and pay my taxes” card then you are going to be screwed royally. And for those expecting some type of collapse , think again this is going to go for a long time , with little uprisings(BLM, Occupy Wallstreet, etc)crises alleviated by even greater cash handouts.
I don’t see anything different about government actions pre-covid vs Covid. Government handed out $500 to everyone when GWB became President. The Fed and Treasury have been monetizing debt from computers in the Caymans since the 2001 recession. We will just become Japan next. It is all just electrons anyway.
Except everytime a Republican President is combined with a Republican Senate/House, there is an eventual crash. This economic crash was coming anyway but Covid masked it. The tax cut ballooned the debt again and loose regulations and poor risk management caused a pandemic. Last time it was a financial crisis because of derivatives. This time it will just be back to 1% growth as far as the eye can see. The truth is the Republican philosophy is to crash the economy and pick up assets for pennies on the dollar. This time it hasn’t worked because the Fed prevented a crash. They “learned” from the last crisis that they can hold assets longer than people think. There are some simple policies for the middle class that the Democrats could institute to wipe out the Republicans for good. Hopefully someone is smart enough to see it.
The economic/wall street crashes are over, that’s the whole point, they are no longer needed to maintain the illusion, simply put: The idea of fairness/capitalism/marketplace/etc. is dead, it’s no longer needed. We are entering a new to the U.S stage and that is a quasi open socialistic-market economy and the everyday citizen accept that as long as they get their cut. Open socialism(it won’t be called that) is already here, it won’t be going away, it will come under a different name(stimulus, fancy sounding name, etc), the political party doesn’t matter.
We are entering a new illusion now(they are always needed, Plato’s cave, etc), and that is to still think that we are part of some fair marketplace economy, democratic, etc. If you fall for it you will pay dearly, if you adapt you can prosper and have a meaningful life, it’s up to you as it has always been.
Rare insight.
Nobody will listen to your wisdom, of course, except for those who already share it.
Oh, look…already lined up to ‘splain it the way it really is…..hehehe.
Interesting
I just voted at one of the locations in GA at 8AM. Took a total of 15 minutes from walking up and signing in to walking out. Only idiots go the first day… Columbus Day at that – everyone is off…
Mish, it is hard to say for certain but I do think this favors Biden, you did say this: “Ballots whose signatures do not match official records will get tossed. ” In Florida we are assured that if they question the authenticity of a signature the person will be contacted.
I plan to go to vote early on the 19th when it begins here. Though if the lines are as they appear above I will wait. One thing that I am certain will be a problem is that Trump has called upon republicans to go to the polls and “keep them honest” which is dog whistling his zombies to go to the polls and mess with people. Block access, intimidate. But, I want my vote counted. The only time I ever voted in Florida was 2000 and I planned to vote for Gore, but I had to move to NY in late August too late to register there. So I had to have a FL absentee ballot sent, it arrived the day after the election, it could not be voted. I wonder what an unopened Bush v Gore ballot would be worth now? Bush “won” only after they shut the counting down and that was by 536 votes.
I do not know who in the chain of custody of my ballot held it up, but I do not plan to have my voice silenced this year.
So how did voting go today?
Went well, about a 30 minute queue though the room was very small and packed shoulder to shoulder, no distancing at all. Still the ballot was a two page affair and quick/easy to finish. The voting machine you fed your ballot into is not connected to the net and the paper actually goes into a resrevior under the machine so a paper backup in case of electronic failure, they can just take them out and recount them on a working machine. Felt good about the security.
At this time 25 hours after early voting began the county (117, 094 active eligible voters) has gotten 26,636 mailed in ballots and 4,007 voted in person at the three sites yesterday. I think many did not want to go right on the morning of the first day because they expected hours of waiting, but the weather was fine. 26.77% of voters had turned out by the end of day one.
There were partisans for all ballot choices but they were kept on the public right of way on the verge across the street from the driveway into the library, because it took almost as much time to get into the parking lot asa to get in to vote and I had the top down on the car I was subjected to quite a lot of cheerleading by the Trump people, eventually I just looked over at them and shook my head no, they got the message and quit yelling at me. And I might add looked a bit crestfallen, as did all Trump voters, you could fairly well pick them out, they were the ones not smiling or talking. The blue voters were all grins and chatter.
This is normally a pretty red county, but it looks to me like the blue is a lot more motivated, it may well end up as a lot more purple than the reds would ever admit.
I think Trump loses Florida, in order to overcome the blue metro areas of the state Miami-Dade up through Jupiter/Ft. Liquordale, Orlando, Tampa/St. Pete, Jville, and Tallahassee) all the rural counties combined have to go republican in a big way and even then look what happened in 2000, 536 vote difference. Without Florida’s electors Trump has no path to win. Not even debatable that fact.
Does not mean he will not try to cheat, but I do not think it is going to work, I think the margins will just be too wide to plausibly pull it off.
Also, no down ballot issues to draw voters except maybe the minimum wage one that would raise state minimum to $15 per hour, but that was DOA anyway. Some localities might need that level but not most of the state.
Anyway, having done all I can I feel great, I can ignore the lies and scandalous ads and GOP BS, and look forward to this 4 year long nightmare ending in ignoble failure by the right.
Someone tell Trump and senator Cruz the SHOE IS GOING TO BE ON THE OTHER FOOT come January 3.
Did you see that irony deprived dildo is now saying we should uphold constitutional originalism by a constitutional amendment to stop dems from packing the court? What a dipsheet! As if he had a 2/3 majority in the US House and Senate or 2/3 of the states to sign on to such a foul fascist dream. That man is clueless I hope the state of Texas goes Biden just so he can spend the next years worrying about having to get a REAL job.
Trump better hurry and drop that bomb about biden before everyone votes.
Biden is totally CORRUPT and Joe Biden was BOUGHT by Russia while he was VP through Hunter Biden who got a 3.5 million dollar wire transfer from the wife of Mayor of Moscow and the mayor and his billionaire wife belong to Putin’s Elite.
Everybody voting for Joe Biden is voting for an actual Russian puppet and for massive corruption.
But media refuses to cover this and let’s Joe Biden either LIE (to Democrat freindly reporters) or NOT answer questions (to anybody who is not known to be in the tank for Democrats).
USa has been corrupted totally under Obama/Biden’s 8 years and Trump has tried to fix it but was betrayed by Sessions being a weak AG and Barr is only slightly better.
SPAM!
Trump has a bomb? If he does it is already too late, no lie he could make up would be believed at this point. By his borg maybe, but not by people with brains, and the thing is it would have to be something that is WORSE than what he is doing to the nation in order to change any Biden voter’s mind, and that is a very tall order.
Frankly Rbm Trump is just out of ammo, there is nothing he could reveal that would keep me home or get me to vote for him.
Well, if the bomb has to wait until after he comes up with his health care plan (which he promised years, months, weeks ago) it could be some wait.
Marietta is a northern suburb of Atlanta. This is not a reflection of the USA.
There are a lot of intelligent posters on this site, and obviously the author is very intelligent. However, have any you been watching the massive enthusiasm for Trump vs the apathy of Biden? Have you seen a Biden campaign rally with 30 people (half secret service and his staff) vs a Trump rally (thousands)? Have you seen the reportedly 30, 000 cars in Miami, the Trump boat parades, Trump support in Beverly Hills, and just recently the YUGE support on Long Island???
If this was a normal election process, Trump would win and a massive landslide. He will win anyway. We will just have to wait until…., well, I don’t know when. It could be weeks.
TRUMP 2020, because he is the only one fighting for America, and battling Marxism (Progressive ideology here at home) and globalism.
The only problem is this, no one is being groomed to take over after he serves his second term. Sadly, I expect a Marxist (progressive) to be elected after.
I agree with your assessment about that part of Georgia but this is a referendum on Trump. Biden isn’t a loved or even liked candidate and that doesn’t really matter. People either love or hate the President and it is going to depend on who turns out more. Sadly people are negative by nature or its instilled because of social media being a bastion of hate. Hate will drive voters to the polls in droves. This will be the end of America as I expect a civil war is coming next.
Explain Marxism to me. I’ll wait.
Marxism=Communism
You’re a long way from Marxism or Communism, although The Fed is doing its best to push you in that direction.
They’re not the same.
Explain communism, and link it to ANY prominent Democrat’s policies. I’ll wait.
Why stop at two terms? Why not just abolish the 22nd amendment and be prez for life? Maybe he could even do it by executive order. /s
Trump won’t get a mulligan for being a failed POTUS!.
Too many dead Covid – 19 victims on his watch, it’s not the economy stupid,
SCIENCE MATTERS!
Trump = “Tyrannical Rude Untruthful Morose Pathetic”
Biden = “Believable Integrity Democracy Empathetic Noble”
“Join Our Effort”
Dear America,
I’m writing to inform you that despite your belief that you are the ‘world’s most democratic nation’ you fall a long way behind in many respects and most starkly in the haphazardly run voting system.
Waiting all day to vote is insanity and something that is to be expected in a third world country. (In my own country we have compulsory voting. Everybody does votes. Usually I face lines either no lines or lines under 10 minutes.)
Please get you shit in order.
Lots of love,
The Rest of the Free World.
(While there is plenty of schadenfreude in the rest of the world regarding the trouble that the USA faces. Overall most people and countries do not want to see the USA fail. It bodes badly for the rest of the world. Likewise while many can mock the EU and its bureaucracy failure of the EU also bodes ill for the rest of the world.)
In Belgium voting is compulsory too, we don t have to stand in line very long either…. only problem last time was that we had to wait 500! days before we had a government, a government composed of losing parties while the real winners were excluded for being too rightist….Long live democracy !
Why Rejected Ballots Could Be A Big Problem In 2020 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-rejected-ballots-could-be-a-big-problem-in-2020/
In the US, we suppress the vote. It’s bipartisan. We don’t want The Little People voting and interring with our Oligarchy.
Paper ballots, counted in public, is The World Recognized Gold Standard of fair, auditable elections.
That’s why America doesn’t have it.
Instead, both parties tell us that privately owned, secret software owned by rich people is rabid agendas is safe and secure way to vote. And the government won’t allow us to audit it, because rich Ivy League people – who say corporations are people – on the Supreme Court says it’s a corporate trade secret. and private property thus auditable.
In other words a Libertarian dream – privatized non public elections.
tRump is making the American democracy great again: his voting suppression tricks are motivating more people to fight back by voting early in order to make sure their votes count.
In my country we all vote the same day.
Turn out percentage is much higher than in the US.
I have never seen a line of more than 2-5 people …
If there were a line up, you can go select another voting location …
I expect a lot of these early votes are for Biden. I don’t think Trump voters are worried much about voter suppression.
It might turn into a landslide for Biden. I hope it doesn’t make him think that it’s because we think he’s some kind of statesman or something.
The rush is because Trump made people afraid to vote late. I think it’s that simple.
I will vote on Election Day, after I get off work, and I expect it will tie me up for maybe five minutes. If that.
I don’t know what your options are. You may be right. On the other hand, Trump wants chaos. It could be chaotic. Militia “poll-watchers.” If you are wrong about the 5 minutes, I hope you will stick it out.
Oh, I will. You can count on it. There probably won’t be any poll watchers where I usually vote…just lots of Republicans in suits…..there at the Laura Bush Library….the Trump voters will be out, but I don’t expect any Proud Boys…
Maybe if we had this much enthusiasm to vote for the last 30 yrs we would not be in the mess were in now
Yep, I’m regretting voting only once during that whole span. I’ll vote anti-republican every time from here on out though. If the race is close, I’ll vote for the dem, if it isn’t, will be 3rd party. The GOP can not be allowed to continue to exist after going all in with trump and the Russians.
The Mueller witchhunt showed there was NO collusion and yet Democrats keep blabbing about Russia when talking about Trump.
Latest declassifications show that Hillary Clinton INVENTED the blame Russia and Trump narrative to DISTRACT from her email problems (private email server to evade FOIA’s so she could hide the corruption when she led State Department and then Loretta Lynch and Comey referring to the investigation as a “matter” when the ILLEGAL server was revealed through a Judicial Watch lawsuit and had to be investigated and Comey letting Clinton PICK which emails she showed to the FBI and Clinton deleted 33k emails and Comey gave everyone around Clinton IMMUNITY before FBI interviewing them to ensure they could all LIE their eyes off) and declassified records show CIA’s Brennan was aware of the plot by Clinton and briefed Obama about it and then Hillary Clinton and DNC ordered and paid for the Steele Dossier and Steele used as a subsource a Russian living longterm in USA who was already suspected to be a Putin agent and the guy was working in a Democrat thinktank and the guy invented all kinds of lies with his Russian drinking buddies in USA and Steele wrote them in his Dossier and gave it to Clinton and then FBI used the Dossier and leaks to media about the Dossier (open source corroboration) to get Trump campaign under surveillance by LYING to the FISA court and getting rights for total surveillance of Carter Page and then used NSA’s two-hop rule to also have total surveillance of everybody who Carter Page was in contact with and EVERYBODY who was in contact with somebody who had been in contact with Carter Page so WHOLE of Trump campaign including Trump was under NSA surveillance.
Hillary Clinton was the candidate controlled by Russia since she had already committed massive corruption in the Uranium One sale where Russia bought 20% of American uranium and CLinton gave the OK at State Department for the sale and then the seller paid hundreds of millions in BRIBES to CLinton Foundation as “donations” which were in effect BRIBES paid by Russia through overpaying for Uranium One to get control of it and having an agreement the sellers would donate hundreds of millions to Clinton Foundation.
In reality Hunter Biden also got 3.5 million dollar wire transfer from Moscow Mayor’s wife while Joe Biden was vice-president.
Moscow mayor and her wife belong to Putin’s elite and it is clear as day that Joe Biden was BOUGHT by Russia when he was VP through Hunter Biden.
Obama/Biden REFUSED to sell American arms and missiles to Ukraine while Russia took control of large slice of Ukraine with Russian-backed russian speaking Ukrainian rebels.
Trump REVERSED the Obama/Biden policy and Trump sold Ukraine arms and Javelin missiles.
After all of this Democrat activists still spread the “Russia Collusion” hoax and media is worthless and gives Democrats and Obama, CLintons and Biden a total pass for what they had done.
Joe Biden and Hunter Biden should be in PRISON just like Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton with his 500k speech paid by Russian government.
Your check is in the mail, Comrade FactsonJoe, for this excellent propaganda piece, in rubles just like you requested.
How much does the Comedy Store pay for your comedy routine?
the overriding problem with Trump..and it was exemplified ever more over time..is that its all about Trump..not you ,not me, not the country but Trump…and the people are realizing it was all about Trump and they are ready to try ‘door number two’ as an alternative to Trump’s never ending “all about me”
I for one am tired of these assholes. Bring on the new assholes!
Remember Jeb! ?
Please clap
I agree Trump will attempt to win in court what he surely won’t by the box
The long lines are voter suppression. Its incredible that in this country the right to own a weapon is more sacred than the right to vote. Judge Amy Barrett holds this view by the way.
Seems obvious to me that those on line are mostly voting Biden. The images on TV just makes everyone more motivated
The second amendment is more important than the right to vote.
While things that show this haven’t happened in recent history, these events have happened repeatedly throughout history. The people give the government its power not the other way around.
Blue or red doesn’t matter. It’s never has. The citizens are what matter.
Waiting in line to vote for 12 hours? Talk about underemployment. Bring back the free voting whiskey of the early 1800’s!
Three pictures from Georgia, but none from Wis, Minn, PA, and Mich? Does “The silent majority waits in line 8 hours to vote for Biden.” need a period after “vote”?
I’m calling a solid Biden win. Though I think he won the Dem primaries by name recognition and a single-day decision process, there are a lot of people out there whose information about the non-personal world is only through CNN, ?BC, and Comedy Central. The media, blind-sided in 2016 by an underfunded outsider, are back and in the driver’s seat, baby.
American people love our Dear Leader Don so much, they cannot wait to vote for Him to make America great again, and again, and again, forever!