76 Percent Of Us Can Vote By Mail For The Upcoming Election - NYT

August 11, 2020

Yowzers! (Which apparently can also be spelled with an "s" instead of the "z.")

I'm writing this post so I can come back to it after November 3 and see how right/wrong my crystal ball was.

My prediction: We're going to have a mess on our hands. Whoever loses the election is going to sue every state they lost on the basis there was fraud. I'm predicting we won't know who the winner is until January 18, 2021. Which means that Biden's transition teams are likely to have a tough time getting debriefed by Trump's organization during the standard transition period. If Biden is declared the winner on January 18, he and his team will face a difficult transition - meaning that his first 100 days will be spent getting up to speed as opposed to implementing his agenda and leading the country.

That's my prediction and I'm sticking to it ... until I change my mind. 🤪

Here's some data about the 2016 presidential election from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

The EAC was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). EAC is an independent, bipartisan commission charged with developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, and serving as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration. EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as audits the use of HAVA funds.

The following data points are among this primary findings regarding the 2016 presidential election:

Turnout

Sixty-three percent of the U.S. civilian voting age population, 140,114,502 million Americans, voted.

Five states – Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oregon – had turnout rates exceeding 70 percent. 

Voter Registration

States reported 214,109,360 million citizens as registered to vote. This represents a 6 percent increase in registered voters compared to the 2012 Presidential Election. Nationally, 86.7 percent of all registrants are considered active voters, and 8.7 percent are on an inactive voter registration list.

States and territories reported processing 77,516,596 million voter registration applications, 83.4 percent of which were accepted by election officials.

Online registration applications constituted only 6.5 percent of total registrations in the 2014 election, but accounted for 17.4 percent of registrations in the 2016 Presidential Election. Since its inception, registering to vote online has grown in popularity as it has been adopted by more states. The Department of Motor Vehicles still receives the most registration applications (32.7 percent), while other registration methods, like mail and in-person registration, have declined in use since the 2012 Presidential Election.

From 2014 to 2016, 16,696,470 million citizens (8.8 percent of all registrants) were removed from state voter registration rolls. The number of registrants removed from registration rolls between 2014 and 2016 was 1.9 million greater than in the same period leading to the 2014 Federal Election (i.e., 2012 – 2014), a 12.8 percent increase. Most states and territories that provided information about the number of citizens removed from registration rolls reported removing between 5 and 10 percent of their registered voters.

Pre-election Voting

In 2016, more than 41 percent of all ballots were cast before Election Day. Of the total turnout, approximately 17 percent of ballots were cast using in-person early voting and nearly 24 percent were cast using by-mail absentee voting.

By mail absentee voting rates vary dramatically across states. Nationally, 79.9 percent of absentee ballots transmitted to absentee voters were returned and 99 percent of returned ballots were counted.

Military and Overseas Voting

In 2016, 930,156 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) ballots were transmitted and 68.1 percent -- 633,592 UOCAVA ballots - were returned. Of the UOCAVA ballots returned by voters, 19,039, about 3 percent, were rejected. Of these rejected ballots, nearly half were rejected because they were not received by election offices on time. 

The number of ballots transmitted to overseas civilians increased by 23% from 2012 to 2016. Illinois, New Jersey and Washington are among the states that reported transmitting many more ballots to overseas civilians in 2016 than in 2012. Cumulatively, those three states accounted for an increase in about 40,000 ballots transmitted to overseas civilians.

Precinct and Polling Places

Administration of the November 8, 2016 General Election was a massive undertaking. Nationwide, there were 178,217 individual precincts (geographic voting areas to which individuals are assigned and that determine the ballot type voters receive) and 116,990 physical polling places (the locations where people can vote on Election Day). In addition, jurisdictions operated more than 8,500 early voting locations in the days leading up to the election.

Poll Workers

Recruiting poll workers continues to be a challenge for many jurisdictions; almost half reported they had a somewhat difficult or very difficult time recruiting poll workers. The poll worker population remains skewed toward older Americans, with 24 percent of poll workers aged 71 and older and another 32 percent aged 61-70.

Provisional Voting

There were 2.4 million provisional ballots cast in 2016, with almost half of those ballots cast in California. Of the provisional ballots cast, 71 percent were counted either partially or in full.

Poll Book Technology

Most jurisdictions across the U.S. (81.8 percent) use preprinted paper registration lists to check-in voters at the polls. From 2012 to 2016, however, there was a 75 percent increase nationally in the use of electronic poll books in elections. In 2012, 645 jurisdictions—7.9 percent of all jurisdictions nationally—reported using e-poll books to sign voters in. By 2016, 1,146 jurisdictions—17.7 percent of all jurisdictions—used e-poll books and 1,109 jurisdictions used them to sign in voters at the polls. Some of these jurisdictions used e-poll books to update voter history and to locate polling places.