In the ongoing experiment of democracy, every election has ripple effects for subsequent elections. But sometimes election cycles can be so disruptive that virtually everything changes. We saw it in 2000, when the outcome of the presidential election was contested in Florida. A Complete Overhaul of America’s Election Infrastructure. The 2020 election was the latest turning point. The COVID-19 pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen has created an avalanche of ways Americans vote.
How Americans vote, who is in charge of running elections, what restrictions there are on voting, and the very infrastructure used to run elections have all been impacted by this unprecedented cycle. rice field. Including your own opinion on changes that adversely affect the electoral system and those who work within it, such as declining confidence in election results, intimidation of election officials, changes in political etiquette norms, and new voting restrictions. There has been a lot of focus on development, but also positive change. And the recent changes in how Americans vote, seemingly influenced by 2020, may not be the case after all. It’s not that 2020 has made voting decidedly better or worse. differentAnd heading into the first presidential election after 2020, these shifts will become even more apparent.
One of the most striking aspects of the 2020 election was the unprecedented use of mail-in ballots. Nearly half (43 percent) of all eligible voters voted by mail in 2020, a record percentage, according to the latest survey. A survey of US electoral performance, a post-election poll of tens of thousands of registered voters conducted by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III. Many of them were due to COVID-19, as states changed voting rules and requirements to make voting by mail easier, and voters who wanted to avoid crowded polling places during the pandemic took advantage. In the 2022 midterm elections, vote-by-mail use declined, but was still higher than pre-2020 levels. In the 2018 midterm elections, his 23 percent of voters voted by mail, whereas in 2022 he had 32 percent. The vote-by-mail percentage actually started before 2020. Since 1996, an increasing percentage of voters are voting this way in every election. So did the extraordinary growth of mail-in ballots in 2020 accelerate this trend, or did it continue regardless?
“It’s hard to speculate on these causalities to recreate the past four years of history without a pandemic,” Stewart said. “However, looking at time trends, it’s surprising that 2022 doesn’t seem too far off from what it would have tended to be, just minus 2020. It is reasonable to argue that the long-term effects on
But there is one thing that 2020 has affected. WHO I was voting by mail. Even as states move to expand mail-in voting in response to the pandemic, President Trump has raised questions about the legitimacy and safety of the method. This has resulted in a marked split between partisans in voting methods. According to SPAE, 60% of Democrats reported voting by mail in 2020, compared with 32% of Republicans. And the chasm continued into the 2022 midterm elections, as Trump (and many Republicans who actually voted that year) persisted in their allegations of election fraud. In 2022, 46% of Democrats reported voting by mail, compared with 27% of Republicans.
Voting methods are not necessarily polarized by party, Stewart explained. In previous elections, both Republicans and Democrats voted by mail at about the same rate, and in the early days of mail-in voting, it was Republican voters who were more likely to actually vote this way.and some The Republican camp is reportedly hoping To restore the trust of Republican voters and get them to accept this method of voting, it will be difficult to put the toothpaste back into the tube. 87% of registered voters who support Democratic candidates said they were very or somewhat confident that their mail-in ballots and absentee ballots would be counted accurately, but were less likely to support Republican candidates. Only 37% of registered voters voted. October 2022 Pew Research Survey — The same share that reported trust in mail-in and absentee ballots before the 2020 election, suggesting that these views persist.
Not only has the 2020 election changed the way we view mail-in ballots, it has also led to widespread changes in the laws surrounding elections. Following the 2020 elections, an unprecedented number of election laws were introduced at the state level, some expanding and some restricting voter access. Regulations surrounding mail-in ballots accounted for the largest share of new voting-related legislation introduced in the first quarter of 2021. According to the Voting Rights Lab report:, a bipartisan organization that tracks election-related laws at the state level. As of March 31, 2021, bills related to vote-by-mail accounted for 44% of all bills tracked by Voting Rights Lab at the time. In 2021 and 2022, 39 states have enacted laws related to mail-in ballots. Twenty-five states have expanded access, 11 have restricted access, and three have done a little bit of both. And so far this year, 63 new vote-by-mail laws have been enacted. Of these, 35 expanded access, 13 restricted access, and 15 had mixed, unclear or neutral effects. Voting Rights Lab Tracker.
“It’s hard to see the intention [behind these laws]However, we have found that the timing is consistent and do not consider it to be purely coincidental. [that these laws were passed] After the 2020 election, we saw a sharp increase in mail-in ballots and early voting,” said Megan Bellamy, vice president of legal and policy at the Voting Rights Lab.
Nationwide, the number of new laws that expand voter access, not just mail-in ballots, outnumbers those that limit it. At the state level, however, there were significant differences in the types of laws passed. In 2021 and 2022, 23 states largely expanded voting rights, 11 states largely restricted voting rights, and six states enacted legislation in 2021 and 2022, according to the report, with mixed results. Voting Lab. While the states are like California and Nevada For example, Texas, Georgia, florida New requirements have been added to vote-by-mail applications, making it even more difficult for voters to use this method.
In some cases, particularly for broad omnibus ballot measures, states have enacted laws that both expand access (e.g., increase the number of days for early voting) and restrict access (e.g., introduce new voter ID requirements). There will be enactments, Bellamy said. In addition to these changes to mail-in ballots, some states are removing inactive voters from rolls more frequently or setting criteria for when voters are removed (e.g., voters who have not voted in the last two elections). etc.) are showing signs of expansion. There was also a tendency to restore voting rights to felons.
The result is an even more colorful patchwork of voting methods than the popular decentralized voting systems of 2020 and earlier. Not only has the voting process changed since 2020, it has changed in different ways from state to state. Many voters, especially those who haven’t voted since the last presidential election, will go to the polls under very different regulations.
Going to the polls, voters may find themselves in a different environment than they did before 2020.President Trump’s allegations that the election was stolen caused many Americans to lose faith in the electoral system, and some Intimidate or harass election officials. In turn, some of those officials resigned or retired early, and a new wave took their place. Partisan and election-denying officials emerged. The majority of election administrators are still nonpartisan civil servants, but the handful of villains currently in charge of running elections have already caused chaos in 2022 and could cause more chaos in 2024.
Not only has it spread conspiracy theories and publicly questioned the election results, but some of these officials have taken actions that endangered the integrity of the election.of Review of Election Administrator Behavior Informing Democracy, a non-profit organization that studies ballot counting and authentication, has been working in six states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) to investigate local government officials who have violated their non-discretionary obligations through actions such as voting against authentication. 94 people were identified. Allowing outside access to elections or voting equipment within a jurisdiction. For example, two members of the Cochise County, Arizona Board of Supervisors: refused to vote to certify the results of local elections In 2022, in protest of this result, different Arizona Countyuntil a judge orders it to do so.
At the end of the day, the 2022 election results were certified across the country and the legitimate winner was sworn into office. But Peter Bondy, managing director of Informing Democracy, said the turmoil still had an impact.
“There’s real danger here,” says Bondi. “Disruption causes delays, and delays have several consequences. One is undermining public confidence in the election, which only adds to conspiracy concerns. [missing] A real deadline to meet. ”
A deep-seated distrust of elections — and Especially electronic voting devices This has led some voters to demand a thorough overhaul of electoral infrastructure. This is, by and large, one of the areas where 2020 did not seem to see existing trends disrupted. Even before 2020, more and more jurisdictions were moving from paperless voting machines to paper ballots that voters fill in (either by hand or using a ballot-marking device), which It’s what election security experts have long recommended. That trend continues, according to Verified Vote, a bipartisan organization. Track election techniques used across the country. In 2018, 71.9 percent of registered voters lived in jurisdictions that use voter-marked paper ballots. In 2020 he will be 88.5 percent voting, and in 2024 he will live in a jurisdiction where 94.1 percent of registered voters use paper ballots.
“A larger trend is the continued phasing out of paperless systems,” said Mark Lindemann, director of policy strategy at Verified Voting. “There is no clear indication that the trend is accelerating after 2020.”
2020 has had an impact on promoting hand-counting of ballots. Some voters distrust machines, urging local elections offices to abandon the optical scanners used to count ballots in most parts of the country in favor of human counting. requesting support. security expert please do not Recommended Because of the high risk of error. A few jurisdictions are making the switch (in the case of Nye County, Nevada, Introduction of hand counting Overall, Lindemann said the trends for 2020 and beyond are still moving forward. over there from hand count. Since 2020, so far, more than 500 constituencies representing more than 230,000 voters have transitioned from hand counting, while about 2,900 registrants have transitioned from optical scanners to hand counting. Only four jurisdictions represent voters.
“At the moment, the ratio to move moves is 80 to 1, which is consistent with my experience going back to 2005,” Lindemann said. “Actual hand count jurisdictions are slowly moving away from that method.”
Almost every aspect of voting has changed in the last few years, from the rules about voting to how votes are counted. Some of this confusion is likely due to the unusual circumstances and his reaction to the 2020 election, but some is just the natural evolution of the ever-changing electoral system. So this means that in his 2024 voters will show up at the polling place (or break open the ballot envelope!), a landscape they encountered four years ago, or certainly eight years before him. You will be faced with a very different landscape. And how that will affect elections is probably not yet fully understood.
