Poll: Majority plan to vote before Election Day

More than 7,000 Floyd County voters have already requested absentee ballots.

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A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters nationally plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail.

It’s viewed as a sign of a growing partisan divide over how best to conduct elections in the United States, but may not be reflective of Floyd Countians’ plans amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, 39% of registered voters in the U.S. say they will vote by mail, well above the 21% who say they normally do so, according to a new poll from The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The rise is skewed toward backers of the former vice president, 53% of whom plan to vote by mail.

Fifty-seven percent of Trump’s supporters say they’ll vote in person on Nov. 3. That’s a higher rate than the 46% overall who plan to go to their precincts. In 2016, roughly 58% of voters did so.

Monday is the first day absentee ballots can be mailed out in Georgia. In Floyd County, more than 12% — 7,170 of the 57,572 registered voters — had requested absentee ballots as of Thursday, according to the secretary of state’s latest report.

That’s already nearing the county’s total of 8,492 mail-in ballots counted in the June 9 presidential preference and primary election — and more applications are coming in daily. Just short of 100 were received on Thursday alone.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has set up a website to take the requests online. A link is provided on each voter’s personalized page at GeorgiaMyVoter.com.

The primary gave a glimpse of local voters’ balloting preferences, and it shows a higher percentage in both parties opting to vote before Election Day.

Of the votes cast in the Republican primary, 44.68% were by mail and 16.68% were in person during the early voting period. Just 38.64% went to the polls on June 9.

A majority of Floyd County voters in the Democratic primary chose mail-in ballots, 60.17%. However, there were significantly more Republican voters, making it 2,582 Democrats who voted absentee compared to 5,910 Republicans.

Early in person voting attracted just 8.65% of local Democratic voters, and 31.18% went to their precincts on Election Day.

Oct. 5 is the deadline for Georgians to register to vote in the Nov. 3 election. Information is available on the Georgia My Voter Page site and through the Floyd County Board of Elections & Voter Registration, 706-291-5167.

Early in person voting starts Oct. 12 and will run for two weeks, including both weekends in Floyd County. Locations will be at the County Administration Building, Rome Civic Center and Garden Lakes Baptist Church.

Ballot drop boxes also are expected to be set up in at least two places.

Concerns about the mail

Trump for months has denigrated mail voting, and Democrats have expressed concern about postal delays that could keep such ballots from being counted.

The AP poll finds ebbing enthusiasm for mail voting: Only 28% of Americans say they would favor their state holding elections exclusively by mail, down from the 40% who said so in April as the coronavirus pandemic was first spreading in the

U.S. and before Trump launched his antimail campaign.

Support for states allowing voters to cast an absentee ballot without requiring a reason is higher, but also down since April, from 56% to 47%.

Sherry Santiago, 55, of Palm Bay, Florida, is disabled and cannot drive. The Democrat said she almost lost her chance to vote in 2016 because she couldn’t get a lift to the polling place and she’s happy to sign up for a mail-in ballot this year.

“I don’t want to take a chance of missing it,” Santiago said of the election. “I have total confidence in voting by mail. I don’t worry there will be a problem.”

But Michelle Harman, 44, a Republican who works in the oil and gas industry in Artesia, New Mexico, plans to vote in person on Election Day.

“This year more than any other, there’s a lot of gray area about what could happen to your vote,” said Harman, who said she didn’t question voting by mail in 2016 when she was out of town.

Traditionally, voting by mail has not been a partisan issue. Until recently, Republicans were more likely to do so than Democrats, because older voters have tended to vote by mail more often than younger voters.