Washington: More than 11 million North American voters have cast their early votes in person and by mail throughout the country to date, according to data from the United States Electoral Project (USEP), a non-governmental organization, Prensa Latina publishes.
According to the analysts of that entity, many citizens cast their vote early to avoid the crowds on election day, for fear of catching Covid-19, a disease that has already caused more than 219,700 deaths in the country and a figure higher than the seven million 993 thousand 215 infections, according to the Worldometer digital site.
The data compiled by Professor Michael McDonald, from the USEP, indicates that a total of 66 million 322 thousand 813 ballots have already been requested by mail, and some states have not yet reported their data.
In 2016, nearly a quarter (33 million) of all votes was cast by mail ballots, but that number is expected to be much higher in this election.
By way of comparison, for the 2016 presidential elections, as of October 16 of that year, nearly 1.4 million Americans cast their ballots in advance.
In this context, according to experts, the current figures do not necessarily mean a decrease in the traditional abstentionism characteristic of the United States, which could be more starkly evident on November 3.
Although the 2016 elections became one of the elections with the highest turnout, 60.1 percent of potential voters exercised their right to vote.
In percentage terms, the mid-term of 2018 were the second most attended in the history of this country, after those of 1914, and both had just 49.3 and 50.4 percent participation, respectively.
In Georgia’s current election, more than 128,000 people cast their votes on the first day of early voting in person on Monday, breaking the previous record of nearly 91,000 ballots in 2016, according to the secretary of state’s office.
In Florida, nearly 1.8 million voters have already sent their ballots by mail as of Tuesday morning, and Democrats lead with almost 400,000 more ballots than Republicans sent that way, according to local media.
The surge in early voting sparked legal battles in many states, as Trump said without presenting proof that mail-in ballots lead to fraud, a claim dismissed by experts, according to a Reuters report.
The first day delays in Georgia were exacerbated by breakdowns, including a software problem in voting machines and failures in the equipment used to register voters – setbacks similar to those that occurred in other territories.