2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Ljube]

Michael McDonald
@ElectProject
·
4m
#earlyvote cast as a percentage of *total* 2016 vote is truly amazing

SD: 22.8%
VA 20.7%
WI: 20.6%
WY: 14.9%
VT: 14% (report from yesterday)
MI: 13.1% (report from yesterday)
ND: 12.1%
NJ: 12.3%
FL: 12.3%
MN: 11.3% (report from last Fri.)

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-202

LOL regarding the ridiculous Virginia turnout, that's just pure hatred of Trump fueling it.

Wisconsin too.

Yeah but at least you could say that's a battleground state and it's important to vote.  Nobody is actually fearful Trump will win Virginia, people are just turning out in outrageous numbers early to give Trump the middle finger.

Yeah. Virginia is full of Trump haters.

[Ljube]

are old people in Florida turning on Trump in a meaningful way?

I think so. It all has to do with COVID. Plus they don't have the same economic worries as younger people have.

One thing that could bring them back into the fold would be if Trump could paint Biden/Harris as communists.

Another would be if there is a secret diagnosis that Biden has dementia, or Alzheimer's.

[Ljube]

The USPS stuff might have backfired on Trump. It looks like it scared a lot of Democrats into sending their ballots in as early as possible.

Could these be Democratic supervoters voting early?
Is there anybody left who will vote on Election Day?

[Ljube]

That Denton number... something wild is happening in that county.

High Republican turnout...

Given every single poll we’ve seen that Republicans aren’t going to vote early, doubtful.

If the actual vote is telling us that Republicans are voting early and the polls are telling us that Republicans aren't voting early, then there is a systemic problem with the polls and I believe it's due to non-response bias.

[Ljube]

Oregon is naturally not a state in contention in 2020 at the Presidential Level, let alone the US-SEN Races, although perhaps PUBs might be able to pull off a stealth upset in CD-04 (Questionable but side topic), or even be able to hold the OR-SoS Office (Questionable but side topic).

I will not mention nor delve into potential State House and State Senate Elections on the line in this particular thread.

Still...

Oregon was just rated the easiest State to vote in within the entire United States:

Voting is easier in Oregon than any other state in the nation, according to the latest analysis by a team of political scientists tracking the issue.

“Oregon, which has one of the most progressive automatic voter registration processes and mail-in voting, maintains the first position as the easiest state in which to vote,” the researchers wrote in a summary of their findings published online ahead of publication in a scholarly journal.

The other top states for ease of voting are Washington, Utah, Illinois and Maryland. Oregon, Utah and Washington all have permanent vote-by-mail processes.

Political scientists Scot Schraufnagel of Northern Illinois University, Michael J. Pomante II of Jacksonville University and Quan Li of Wuhan University in China maintain an index of how easy or difficult it is for Americans to register to vote and cast a ballot. They last ranked states by their “cost of voting index” in 2016.

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/10/oregon-is-the-easiest-state-in-the-nation-to-vote-in-new-analysis-finds.html

What does this mean in?

1.) Oregon was the first State in Union to adopt Universal Vote-by-Mail (VbM). I was initially skeptical way back in the late '90s, because I liked the rituals of standing in line at my local voting precinct, as well as the potential confusions caused by the "new rules".

Still, it made it so much easier for Seniors and remote rural residents, as well as younger folks, those living in the cities, to be able to ensure that we could vote regardless of drive-time to in-person precincts, shift schedules, but still it took some time for me to adjust since mailing addresses change and getting the right ballot at your address and updating everything was a bit confusing at first.

2.) The expansion of VbM to include Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) through the state Department of Voter Vehicles (DMV), with an opt-out clause for any interaction with the DMV created a surge of "New Registered Voters" in OR, with Non-Affiliated-Voter (NAV) as the default in the event of not selecting to "opt out".

3.) This has created a surge of new voters in Oregon between 2016 and 2020, well beyond natural eligible voting population within the State.

@ Virginia: Believe you asked me a question about this some 3-5 Years back.

4.) OR has gone from 2016 to 2020 in the following:

    A.) 2016:   2,568,872 Registered Voters--- 980.9k DEM (38.2%), 689k PUB (27.8%), 873k MISC (34.0%).

   B.) 2018:   2,751,512  RV---  977.7k DEM (35.5%), 708.1k PUB (25.7%), 1,066k MISC (38.8%)

   C.) 2020:   2,950,429  RV---  1,055k DEM (35.7%), 760.8k PUB (25.8%), 1,135k MISC  (38.5%)

5.) More to come as we continue to see OR results roll in, but thus far OR EV is heavily DEM, mainly because of large early dumps from Multnomah County.

Please, keep informing us about developments in Oregon and in particular about the CD-04 race.

[Ljube]

Sorry if this question seems dense, but can somebody spell out for me what is going on in Florida, preferably in a simultaneously non-doomer and non-optimist way? Do Democrats really need a 650k party advantage by election day? Are Republicans actually surging and beating expectations? Does this take into account how NPA are likely to vote? (Who do those voters even favor?) And does any of this give us any insight into who's favored? I'm not looking for any particular answer, I'm just having a hard time grasping this.

Thanks in advance.

Nobody knows that. This election is unlike any other.