More voters – especially Democrats – are flocking to the polls to vote in person for this midterm election after President Trump’s verbal attacks on the validity of mail-in voting and threats to dismiss ballots sent by mail with claims of voter fraud.
Significance. More than 17 million people across the political spectrum have voted early and in person in this midterm election with a week to go, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. This is almost equivalent to the 20 million people who voted early and in person in the 2022 midterm election.
Higher numbers of Democrats in particular are voting in person during this midterm election, despite historically having significant confidence in the mail-in ballot system, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.
Just 15% of Democrats plan on casting ballots by mail, down from 22% in the last midterm election in 2022, and 21% in the 2024 general election, the poll found.
According to the poll, “64% of Democratic voters say they are confident mail and absentee votes will be counted as voters intend – down from 88% in the 2022 midterm elections and 85% among Kamala Harris’ voters in the 2024 presidential election.”
By contrast, trust in mail-in voting for Republicans is slightly up just 5% compared to the 2022 midterm elections. Roughly 42% of Republicans surveyed in the recent poll said they trust their ballot will be counted properly.
Key battleground states such as Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada have so far seen record numbers of early, in-person voting.
In Georgia, more than one million people cast early in-person ballots so far this year, according to the Georgia Secretary of State, which is 12% higher than data from the last midterm election four years ago.
Meanwhile, the number of early, in-person ballots was up at least 65% in Wisconsin as of the first day of voting.
Overlooked angle. The threats against mail-in voting ballots predominantly affect Latino and Black voters, who, as studies show, are more likely to have their ballots disproportionately rejected.
Research from the University of California Los Angeles found that racial bias against people of color led to their mail-in ballots getting thrown out four times more than ballots from White voters.
The study looked at past election data from California and Washington, and found that signatures of Hispanic voters were more likely to be rejected compared to the signatures of White voters. In one county in Washington state, Hispanic last names were four times as likely to be thrown out for signature mismatch compared to those with White last names, after being reviewed by election officials.
The decision to throw out ballots is solely on election workers and can be highly subjective, which increases the chance for racial bias to influence decision-making.
The power structure. For years, Trump has publicly criticized mail-in voting, citing his own claims of mishandled ballots in the 2020 presidential election and falsely claiming he won in the contest against now-former President Joe Biden. These claims sparked an insurrection at the Capitol, when a mob of his loyalists stormed the building to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Since he returned to office for a second term, the Trump administration undertook systemic changes and serious threats to the mail-in voting system that millions of Americans have used to participate in democracy. In March, he signed an executive order that attempted to place new guidelines for providing proof of citizenship and change how elections are administered. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately declined to lift a lower court’s order blocking Trump’s new U.S. Postal Service restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
In August, the Supreme Court also greenlit the Homeland Security secretary, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Social Security Administration commissioner compiling a federal citizenship list to help states verify voters’ citizenship, The Emancipator previously reported.
Although the administration’s proposed Postal Service restrictions on mail-in voting remain blocked, Trump and his allies have successfully spread confusion about voting in the midterm elections. This has made voters doubt whether or not their votes will count if they vote by mail.
What experts say. “People need to make their own personal choices about how they participate in democracy, and we just encourage people to have a plan,” said Maju Varghese, the co-founder and executive director of the Democracy Security Project, a nonprofit that works to provide safety and security resources to those facing political violence and threats to civic engagement.
“If you see that in some places, or in some communities, there’s been a shift to in-person voting, it’s probably because… there’s been a direct impact of sort of a steady drumbeat of all the noise,” Varghese said. “[Voters] decided to make choices to go vote in person, because they feel as though that is the best way for them to ensure that their vote is counted, or to ensure that they’re heard.”
