Though November 3, 2020, came and went like every election day in the history of the United States of America, the 2020 United States presidential election was one of unprecedented nature. Not only was the county facing the global COVID-19 pandemic, but an economic recession, increased political divide, and a sitting President making claims, seven months before the election, of “...tremendous potential for voter fraud...” due to mail-in voting (Trump). As these external forces compounded the 2020 election, mail-in voting increased voter turnout across the country by countering voter suppression tactics, making the process easy, safe, and convenient for Americans, all while providing neither political party an advantage in claiming victory. Since mail-in voting is nothing new to the American voting process, we evaluate how the 2020 United States presidential election differs from 2016. Contrary to popular belief or any tweet from former President Donald J. Trump, mail-in voting did not come to be in 2020 but gained more comprehensive access due to the need to vote safely amidst the global pandemic. Though the current mail-in voting process has evolved, the first instances of widespread absentee voting date back to the Civil War. As President Abraham Lincoln was “...concerned about the outcome of the midterm elections...,” between 1862 and 1864, 19 union states addressed the issue head-on (Rotondi). They ultimately changed their state’s laws to “...allow soldiers to vote absentee” (Rotondi). From these immediate changes leading up to the 1864 presidential election, 150,000 soldiers were able to cast their votes from the battlefields (Rotondi). However, it would not be until World War II and the passage of the Soldier Voting Act of 1942 that all soldiers abroad would be allowed to send their ballots from overseas (Rotondi). The United States government would further pass legislation in time to further increase access to voting for the military and overseas citizens, including The Federal Voting Assistance Act of 1955, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE Act) (Rotondi). The forward-thinking ideology of President Lincoln in 1861 and the subsequently passed legislation by the United States Congress that followed ultimately paved the way for civilians to gain access to mail-in voting in their home state. Though there is a debate as to whether California or Washington state was the first to offer a no-excuse absentee ballot, in 1974, states began adopting legislation that outlined the requirements or steps voters must take to successfully submit a mail-in ballot across the United States of America (Rotondi). According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, currently, “twenty-seven states and Washington, D.C., offer “no-excuse” absentee voting...” and “eight states conduct elections entirely by mail...” (Table 1: States with No-Excuse Absentee Voting). Alternatively, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the remaining fifteen states will “...only permit certain voters to request an absentee ballot by mail, based on an “excuse”...” (Table 2: Excuses to Vote Absentee). With every state having enacted laws on mail-in voting before the unprecedented 2020 election, “both Democratic and Republican-led states had relaxed absentee voting requirements in the months leading up to the election...” because of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic (Aldrich et al. 64). In 2020, alone, 79 bills were enacted to expand voting access across the country, while Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee passed restricted changes to make voting harder for their citizens (Voting Laws Roundup 2020). Regardless of these changes and in a testament to the American citizens will power to make their voices heard, 2020 saw a 22% increase in mail-in ballots over the 2016 presidential election, according to the United States Census Bureau (Scherer), and “...the highest level of voter turnout in over a century” (Aldrich et al. 274). The massive increase in voter turnout was not only because of the fight to restore our democracy but partly due to the lack of voter suppression by increased access to the vote. The state of Georgia is an excellent example of how voter suppression in previous years and the lack thereof in 2020 can lead to highly different outcomes when everyone has an equal chance to cast their vote and play their part in our democracy. Between 2012 and 2018, the Atlanta Journal- Constitution found that 214 precincts, or “...nearly eight percent of the state’s polling places...have shut their doors...” (Niesse et al.). Unfortunately, these closures lead to even further disenfranchisement of the voting electorate, as fewer precincts mean longer lines, a longer wait time that can last hours, and a longer commute from home, directly impacting Georgia’s working class. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution further outlines that of the counties hit the hardest by these changes, “...thirty-nine have poverty rates that are higher than the state average” (Niesse et al.). The executive director of Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Helen Butler, further explains how these actions affect the electorate, “It’s usually in areas with poor people and minority communities that have less resources to get to other locations” (Niesse et al.). This statement pinpoints why mail-in voting in Georgia was successful in the 2020 election. By stripping away the voter suppression tactics plaguing Georgians and providing every registered voter the ability to request a no-excuse absentee ballot, we, in turn, increased the number of votes cast in the 2020 election.
With the ease of access to a no-excuse absentee ballot in 2020, Georgia saw a 1,112,005 vote increase in mail-in ballots from 2016 to 2020, from 199,357 to 1,311,361, respectively. In- person voting saw a 241,397 vote decrease, from 3,935,373 in 2016 to 3,693,976 in 2020. The uniformed and overseas citizen’s vote saw a 6,043 vote increase, from 12,432 to 18,475 votes. All combined brings the total difference between the presidential elections to 876,651 votes, a 21.14% increase (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). By synthesizing the numbers and contrasting the differences in barriers plaguing each election’s voters between the 2016 and 2020 elections, we can see that mail-in voting did, in fact, increase voter turnout in the state of Georgia. This voting method proved so crucial to improving voter turnout that in 2021, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the controversial Senate Bill 202, the “Election Integrity Act of 2021,” into law. The new law targets mail-in voting, among other things. According to the ACLU of Georgia, “The State forces citizens who need to vote by mail to risk identify theft” (Georgia’s Anti-Voter Law (SB 202)). It also “...cuts off citizens’ ability to apply for an absentee, mail-in ballot 11-days before the final election day without any provisions for emergencies...” and “...restricts drop box locations and hours to inside early voting locations during office hours only” (Georgia’s Anti-Voter Law (SB 202)). These changes, in direct response to the success of mail-in ballots, played in increasing voter turnout, further underlining the state’s actions to suppress future votes.
Like Georgia, many other states successfully adjusted their plan of action going into the 2020 presidential election and further increased turnout. In Change and Continuity in the 2020 Election by John H. Aldrich et al., they outline this shift, “...New Jersey, which expanded access to vote-by-mail ballots during the pandemic, saw a tremendous increase in convenience voting: less than 10% of New Jersey voters used in-person early voting and voting-by-mail in 2016; over 90 percent used these voting methods in 2020” (Aldrich et al. 106). New Jersey was one of the seven states that mailed every registered voter a ballot for the 2020 election. New Jersey’s choice to pivot its traditional election plan in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic was successful. According to the Election Assistance Commission’s “2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report,” only 284,881 people voted in person on election day in 2020 compared to the 3,597,303 just four years prior, as no early in-person voting was held in 2020 (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). The election culminated in 4,178,875 votes being cast via mail-in ballot, up from just 344,897 votes in 2016, respectively. The uniformed and overseas citizen’s vote saw a 5,800 vote increase, from 15,103 to 20,903 votes. Compared to the 3,957,303 total votes cast in the 2016 presidential election, New Jersey saw an increase of 537,356 votes to 4,494,659, a 13.58% increase (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Two other states that saw success with automatically mailing voters a ballot and the subsequent increase in voter turnout were Hawaii and Utah, both of which received double-digit increases in the number of votes cast from 2016 to 2020. Both states, before 2020, passed legislation to conduct all elections by mail going forward due to the shift in how their electorate was submitting their votes following the 2016 presidential election. Hawaii’s bill, HB 1248, went into effect in 2020, while Utah’s bill, HB 172, went into effect in 2019 though enacted in 2012 (Table 18: States with All-Mail Elections). According to State of Hawaii House Bill 1248, “fifty-six percent of Hawaii voters chose to vote early during the 2014 primary, and approximately eighty-three percent of those voters did so through a mail-in absentee ballot. In 2016, the number of votes cast before election day exceeded the number of votes cast at polling places on election day, except in one county” (H.B. No. 1248, C.D. 1). This shift from a traditional in-person voting format to strictly mail-in voting reaped a significant increase in votes for Hawaii. The state saw a 359,411 vote increase from the presidential election in 2016 to 2020, jumping from 189,225 mail-in votes to 548,636 votes. Hawaii’s uniformed and overseas citizen’s vote saw a 2,174 vote increase, from 546 to 2,720. Subsequently, as planned with their legislative changes, Hawaii saw a decrease in in-person voting numbers, from 247,926 votes to just 28,742 (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Though the state moved to all mail-in voting, they still had a voting service center available for “...accessible in-person voting and same-day voter registration” (2020 Hawaii General Election Guide: Your Mailbox Is Your Ballot Box). The state of Hawaii saw an increase of 142,401 votes, up from 437,697 to 580,098, a 32.53% difference. Echoing the over thirty percent change in Hawaii, Utah saw a 38.40% change in the number of votes cast between 2016 and 2020 with their legislative shift, from 1,114,567 votes to 1,542,529 in total (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). This 427,962 vote increase is due to the ease of mail- in voting in Utah. The state jumped from 765,886 mail-in votes in 2016 to 1,386,385 in 2020, a 620,499 vote increase. Similarly to Hawaii and New Jersey, the state saw a decrease in the in- person vote from 344,739 to 148,670, a difference of 196,069 votes (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Additionally, the state saw a bump in the uniformed and overseas citizen’s vote from 3,942 votes to 7,474, an increase of 3,532 votes. Objectively looking at the massive increase in mail-in voting driven in Georgia, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Utah from 2016 to 2020, it is evident that when we make the voting process easy for the electorate to play their part in our democracy, they do in significant numbers. According to the Pew Research Center, “More than nine-in-ten voters (94%) say that voting in the election this November was either very easy (77%) or somewhat easy (17%) ...” (Atske). While in the era where convenience is key to balancing life, “nearly two-thirds of voters (66%) say that convenience was a major reason they chose to vote...” the way they did in the 2020 election (Atske). With the jump in voter turnout from 54.7 percent in 2016 to 61.5 in 2020, we can summarize that the “...turnout in 2020 can be attributed to the increased use of convenience voting mechanisms” (Aldrich et al. 106). In contrast to the four states examined for their success with mail-in voting, not every state reaped the same results. Some states maintained their restrictive mail-in voting practices despite the ongoing pandemic, Alabama being one of them. According to the “Voting by Mail in a Pandemic: A State-by-State Scorecard,” created by the nonprofit public policy organization Brookings Institution, Alabama was the only state in the country to receive a grade of F, or a score of negative one out of a possible twenty-two, for its restrictive policies on mail-in voting (Kamarck et al.). To submit a mail-in ballot in Alabama, “voters need a notary or two witnesses to complete the absentee ballot,” and “...are required to provide a copy of photo I.D. for the mail application and/or ballot” (Kamarck et al.). Furthermore, the ballot must be “...postmarked no later than the day prior to the election and received by the Absentee Election Manager no later than noon on election day” (Kamarck et al.). By complicating the requirements to submit a mail-in ballot and increasing the chance of error that could lead to a vote being rejected, the state of Alabama disenfranchises its electorate while eliminating the potential for increased voter turnout. With these restrictive policies still in place, Alabama did not see a massive jump in voter turnout like others. Though mail-in voting did see a 213,131 vote increase between the 2016 and 2020 elections, in-person voting was comparable with only a minimal decrease of 24,380 votes, or 1.19%, in 2020, from 2,047,462 in 2016 to 2,023,082. Compared to the states of Hawaii and New Jersey, which saw an overall increase of over thirty percent from one election to the next, Alabama received only an 8.96% bump in voter turnout for a total of 2,329,047 votes, up from 2,137,452 in the 2016 election (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Like Alabama’s minimal change in mail-in voting compared to the big picture, the Lone Star state made Texas-sized gains for in-person voting in 2020. With a 533,104 vote increase in mail-in voting, the 10,406,390 in-person votes in Texas eclipsed the mail-in total by 9,424,028. Overall, the state saw a 31.58% increase in the vote from 2016 to 2020, from 8,701,152 to 11,449,044 respectively (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Objectively, though the public’s concern over voting safely amidst the COVID-19 pandemic was valid, the greater fear that mail-in voting was unsafe outlines the almost static in-person voting numbers in Alabama and the 2,194,955 in-person vote increase in Texas (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report).
The in-person voting trend analyzed in Alabama and Texas were not singular events in the 2020 presidential election. Due to the ongoing pushback on the legitimacy of mail-in voting by then President Trump, many Americans did not trust this method of voting. From his first tweet rallying against mail-in voting on April 8, 2020, only 209 days before the election, and the rhetoric that followed ultimately proved successful in persuading millions to vote in person, whether early or on election day (Trump). According to the Pew Research Center, 82% of voters had more confidence in voting in person than the 59% who felt confident voting by mail (Atske). Additionally, when analyzing in-person voters by party, 68% of Trump voters said that “...concerns about voting by mail were a major reason why they voted using the method they did” (Atske). In contrast, only 32% of in-person Biden voters echoed the same sentiment (Atske). From the offensive plan to delegitimize and counteract mail-in voting by President Trump and echoed by a great many in the Republican party, the in-person vote, combined of in-person early voting and in-person election day voting, outperformed the total mail-in vote for the United States of America by 18,927,652 votes. However, this staggering number was down 8,103,248 votes from the 2016 presidential election, an 8.4% decrease (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). When comparing the overall election results for the entirety of the United States of America for the 2016 presidential election to that of the 2020 election, it is apparent that convenience was critical to the voting electorate. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the country saw a significant increase in in-person early voting and mail-in voting. Mail-in voting saw the most significant change between the voting methods, with an increase of 36,346,886 votes between 2016 and 2020, a 109.68% increase. Succeeding behind was early in-person voting, with an increase of 17,141,763 votes, a 71.06% change in the elections. As expected, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increased access to mail-in voting and in-person early voting, in-person election day voting saw a decrease of 25,245,011 votes from 2016’s 72,393,4000 to 2020’s 47,148,389, a 34.87% decrease (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). Through the expanded access to voting methods in 2020, the United States increased the overall vote count by 21,188,606 votes to a total of 161,303,109 votes, compared to the 140,114,503 total votes in 2016, a 15.12% increase. From these staggering differences in numbers between the 2016 presidential election and 2020, it is easy to see how historic the election was. In Change and Continuity in the 2020 Elections, Aldrich et al. explain the importance of the outcome of the election so eloquently, “...more Americans cast a ballot in 2020 than in any presidential election in the nation’s history, and the turnout rate reached its highest level since 1900” (Aldrich et al. 5). Regardless of the historic nature of the 2020 election, one can infer that mail-in voting alone did not help elevate the vote to substantial numbers for either presidential candidate, especially the now President Biden, to claim victory from this one voting method alone. Though mail-in voting eliminated the barriers of voter suppression in some states and became a thing of convenience for countless others, it was not the tipping point or “steal” that many had claimed for a better part of 2020 mail-in voting would be. While dissecting the data for 15 of the 50 United States, FiveThirtyEight found that “...Biden won the absentee vote in 14 out of the 15 states (all but Texas), and Trump won the Election Day vote in 14 of the 15 as well (all but Connecticut)” (Rakich and Mithani). This contrasting division is easily explained as Democrats “...preferred voting by mail or absentee” in the 2020 election while Republicans “...largely preferred to vote in person...” due to the insistence from then President Trump (Aldrich et al. 62). From this fifty-fifty divide in the FiveThirtyEight post-election analysis, the evidence leads to the ideology that mail-in voting did not help Biden win, just as in the same vein, in-person voting did not help Trump win. Researchers at Stanford University concluded in June 2020 that voting by mail “...offers voters considerable convenience, increases turnout rates modestly, but has no discernible effect on party vote shares or the partisan share of the electorate” (Thompson et al.). This conclusion fully supports the previous argument that mail-in voting does increase voter turnout. However, it does not consider how mail-in voting could play a part in flipping a state from one party to another and the ramifications that would follow for the Electoral College. The five states President Biden flipped on election night propelled him to “...winning a comfortable 306 to 232 Electoral College victory...” (Aldrich et al. 5). Each of these states shared a common thread – they made mail-in voting easy and accessible to the electorate. Arizona and Wisconsin mailed every registered voter a ballot, while Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania allowed voters to request a ballot without needing an excuse. All five states saw a massive decrease in in-person voting between 2016 and 2020, while the military and overseas citizen vote increased. Additionally, all five battleground states saw an exuberant increase in mail-in votes: 47.17% in Arizona, 118.64% in Michigan, 557.80% in Georgia, 837.15% in Wisconsin, and an 898.13% increase in Pennsylvania (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report).
From the increases in mail-in voting found in each battleground state, overall voter turnout increased, ranging from 10.54% in Wisconsin to 25.63% in Arizona (2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report, 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report). The increase in votes cast in the 2020 election ultimately shifted the vote in favor of the Democratic candidate flipping all five battleground states marginally. According to The Washington Post, Georgia and Arizona had the most significant margin shifts of the five states in question (Still and Mellnik). Compared to a +5.1 in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Georgia’s produced a +0.2 in favor of the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Biden. The increased turnout shifted Arizona from +3.5 for the Republican ticket to +0.3 in favor of the Democratic ticket (Still and Mellnik). The margin shifts, due in part to the increased mail-in voting and overall voter turnout in this instance, worked to the advantage of then-Vice President Biden, handing him the presidency. Since the certification of the 2020 presidential election between Vice President Biden and President Trump, the country has seen “...at least 42 restrictive voting laws in 21 states” in response to the resounding success of mail-in voting and increased voter turnout (Voting Law Roundups: October 2022). Regardless of the compounding forces that affected the election, such as the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, economic recession, or the efforts to delegitimize the validity of mail-in voting, Americans showed up to play their part in our democracy for the 2020 presidential election. This willingness to cast a vote and exercise our Constitutional right led to “...the highest level of voter turnout in over a century” (Aldrich et al. 274). In contrast to the 2016 election, we have concluded that by making the 2020 election easy, convenient, accessible, and free of voter suppression, we, in turn, collectively increased voter turnout through mail-in voting and provided a path to 270 for then Vice President Biden to claim victory.
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