The Oakland Press

Poll: Majority plan to vote before Election Day

- By Nicholas Riccardi and Hannah Fingerhut

DENVER » A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail, a sign of a growing partisan divide over how best to conduct elections in the United States.

Overall, 39% of registered voters 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.

Fifty-four percent of voters say they will vote before polls open on Election Day. In 2016, roughly 42% of voters did so.

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

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommende­d earlier this year voting by mail as an alternativ­e to face-toface interactio­ns at polling places, which could pose a risk of coronaviru­s infection. States have scrambled to adjust to an expected surge in advance voting, with nearly three dozen changing their mail or absentee voting rules in response to the pandemic.

The president has since tried to fan skepticism of mail voting, baselessly claiming that its widespread use will lead to fraud. Trump warned that mail voting could lead to so many people voting that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” He condemned on Thursday the plan in 10 states to proactivel­y send mail-in ballots to registered voters, claiming without evidence it means the result of November’s election would never be accurately determined.

Studies of past elections have shown voter fraud to be exceedingl­y rare. In the five states that regularly send ballots to all voters, there have been no major cases of fraud or difficulty counting the votes.

The poll found that 33% of Democrats, but just 12% of Republican­s, favor mailonly elections. That’s a decline across the board from April, when 47% of Democrats and 29% of Republican­s backed the idea. Seventy-two percent of Democrats, but just 25% of Republican­s, favor no-excuse absentee voting.

In swing states like Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvan­ia, Democrats have far outpaced Republican­s in requesting mailin ballots so far this year.

John Mohr, 58, who works at a Dollar General store in Wilmington, North Carolina, asked for a mailin ballot, but he plans to drop it off at his local elections office. He’s seen videos on Facebook saying — falsely — that mail-in ballots are labeled by party, tipping off postal workers who could throw them out before they reach the elections office.

“I don’t trust the postal service and I sure don’t trust Democrats,” Mohr said. Trump in North Carolina this month called for his supporters to vote twice — once by mail and once on Election Day — to ensure their vote is counted, which would be illegal. The president now urges supporters voting by mail to check at their polling place whether their ballot was received, but Mohr said he doesn’t want to deal with social distancing rules.

“I don’t want to stand there with 50 different rules,” Mohr said.

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