SEATTLE - American's opinions on no-excuse absentee voting has changed drastically since the last presidential election, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. And among all the different demographics polled, Latinos are the least likely to approve of voting through mail-in ballots without needing a valid reason than any other race or ethnicity.
The survey found out that, overall, six-in-ten Americans say any U.S. voter should have the option to vote early or absentee without having to document a reason. However, the views predictably differ depending on people's political affiliation, race, ethnicity and other factors. Latino respondents (56%) were less likely than Black (74%), White (59%) and Asian (59%) ones to say any voter should have the option to vote early or absentee without an excuse.
Republicans and those who lean toward the party are less likely than Democrats to say early or absentee voting should be available to any voter without the need for a valid reason. Concretely 82% of Democrats and and Democratic-leaning respondents say it should be available to any voter without the need for an excuse, compared to 37% of Republicans. The figure for independents was 60%.
When the Pew Research Center first started to survey people on the matter back in 2018, 57% of Republicans said that any voter should have the option to vote early or by absentee ballot without having to document the reason. Six years later, that number has gone down by 20 percentage points.
A significant talking point around the no-excuse voting has centered around how this would make elections less secure, and both sides also agree to disagree there. Nearly seven in ten conservative Republicans (69%) argued that elections would be less secure if rules were changed to make it easier to register and vote, while 91% of liberal Democrats differed, saying that adapting the rules to make it easier to vote would not make elections less secure.
The recent survey also found out that Americans who live in states where every eligible voter is mailed a ballot without having to request one are more likely to have a favorable view of the no-excuse early or absentee voting. In total, only seven states and the District of Columbia conduct all-mail elections. Mainly located in the Western United States, states that allow all-mail elections can see increased turnout as well as lower election administration costs.
About seven-in-ten adults in states with universal mail-in access (69%) say any voter should have the option to vote early or absentee without an excuse.
The COVID-19 pandemic vastly changed the way people voted, with fewer than one-third of voters casting ballots at a polling place on Election day. Despite former president Donald Trump's undermining of mail voting, a report by the U.S. Election assistance Commission found that in 2020 turnout increased by 6.7 percentage points from the 2016 election and the percentage of mailed ballots jumped to more than 43%.
On top of that, the share of voters casting mail ballots during the 2020 presidential election exceeded that of any other recent national election and the share of those going to a polling place on Election Day dropped to its lowest point in 30 years.
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