90M U. S. voters surge to polls

In Hawaii and Texas, more have cast ballots early than did in the 2016 election

PHILADELPHIA » An unnerved yet energized America is voting with an urgency never seen before in the approach to a presidential election, as a record 90 million people have cast ballots despite an array of challenges: a pandemic, postal delays, long lines and court rulings that have tested faith in the country’s electoral system.

In Texas and Hawaii, turnout has exceeded the total vote from 2016, with days left for absentee ballots to be returned. Ten other states, including major battlegrounds such as Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, have surpassed 80% of the turnout from the previous presidential election. Overall, the early turnout has set the country on course to surpass 150 million votes for the first time in history.

The impact of this huge surge in turnout is one of the most unpredictable facets of the election, as strategists in both parties parse early returns for signs of any advantage. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is counting on a

strong early vote to help him flip states such as Florida and Arizona that President Donald Trump carried in 2016. But Republicans are banking on their voters to turn out in bigger numbers on Election Day and deliver battleground wins, as they did in key states in 2016.

Although Democrats have maintained an edge in early turnout in nearly every state that has seen record participation, Republicans have been closing the gap. In Florida, for example, 40% of the ballots returned came from registered Democrats, and 37.9% from registered Republicans, and in heavily Democratic Miami- Dade County, registered Republicans are turning out at a slightly higher percentage than Democrats. Included in those returns are millions of ballots marked no party affiliation, with no indication whether Biden or Trump is leading.

A recent national poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that Republicans were more likely to vote on Election Day than to vote early, while Democrats showed a preference for voting early. Polls in Georgia, Iowa and other battleground states showed a similar trend.

As the nation enters one of the most consequential weeks for voting in recent years, with swaths of Americans nervous about whether their ballots will be received and counted and others determined to push through concerns about the virus to vote, officials across the country have been mounting a furious effort to shore up election systems that have been pushed to the brink. They are recruiting tens of thousands of additional poll workers, working around the clock to process ballots and keeping polling locations open late to accommodate long lines.

“I’m going to vote like my life depends on it,” Marilyn Crowder, 60, said as she waited in a line a block long at Anna B. Day School in Northwest Philadelphia this week. The school, one of 17 early voting locations open for the first time in Philadelphia, has for weeks drawn lines of voters filing down the street.

For Crowder, a cancer survivor, the pandemic was a motivating factor, as well as what she saw as attempts by Republicans to make it harder to vote. “I personally felt powerless to do anything about it, except what I’m doing now,” she said. “And now I’m making phone calls.”

Les Bignell, 59, a sewer liner from West Allis, Wis., said he dropped his absentee ballot in the box at City Hall days earlier, casting a vote for Trump as he did in 2016. “I did it because of my bank account,’’ he said. “When the lockdown first happened I lost a lot of money, but I got it all back already.”

Never before in modern American politics has the electorate faced so many unknowns while so many Americans still pushed forward to cast their ballots through the mail and in person.

“The issues that are facing this country are generational,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. He said the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, coupled with the heightened political engagement since Trump’s election, had produced a highly energized electorate.

“We wish we could care about other things in our lives, but right now politics matter so much. And people are engaged,” he said. Of course, nonbattleground states, or states without a competitive statewide race, are unlikely to generate such intense voter interest, and early turnout can sometimes lag for reasons ranging from different start dates to disruptions from a hurricane.

But amid the swelling turnout is growing concern over the yawning gap between absentee ballots that have been requested and those that have been returned. With just days to go, 36 million ballots that were requested either have not been returned or have been rejected. Many of those ballots still could be in the mail or in processing or might have been sent to people who now plan to vote in person.

Any problems with the early vote are also likely to affect Democrats more than Republicans. In almost every state, Democrats have requested absentee ballots at a higher rate than Republicans.

The process has been further disrupted by a wave of litigation that often has pitted Democrats fighting to expand access to absentee voting against Republicans seeking tighter restrictions. Lawsuits have, among other issues, disrupted ballot deadlines in key states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and sought to limit the use of drop boxes in Pennsylvania and Texas. Court rulings were coming as late as Thursday night, just days before the election.

For Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court left open a possibility of a future ruling on ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive late, and the secretary of state told all county election officials to segregate those ballots.

Worries about the Postal Service have added to the anxiety. The agency said in a filing that staffing issues resulting from the pandemic were causing problems in some facilities, including some in central Pennsylvania.

Perhaps no state has seen a greater surge than Texas, a suddenly competitive state for Biden.

More than 9 million voters had cast their ballots there as of Friday, despite restrictions ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott that limited ballot drop- off locations to one per county.

In Georgia, where public polls show the two candidates engaged in a tight race, officials expect overall turnout to increase dramatically and to exceed the 4.1 million people who voted in 2016, when the state supported Trump over Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points.

Pointing to record turnout in absentee and early voting, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, said he believed that as many as 6 million people would vote.

In Michigan, 2.6 million voters have already cast their ballots, and turnout is nearing 60% of 2016 levels.