The United States is approaching the final stretch facing the elections that will decide the forty-seventh president.
It is presumed that the fight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be one of the closest in history.Now, the American Union has one of the most complex voting systems, if you will.
Roughly speaking, there are electoral and popular votes. Those of the second type define how the electoral vote will be distributed, that is, “how the state will vote before the Electoral College.” Although the call to the polls was scheduled for next Tuesday, this is not the only way to vote; Early voting, by mail or in person is another alternative.
According to the University of Florida Election Laboratory, as of Friday morning, 66.7 million Americans had already voted early: 35.7 million in person and 30.9 by mail. However, it is expected that this figure will not exceed the records of 2020 when 100 million votes were reached in the midst of the pandemic.
In-person early voting
The same facilities are used as in regular elections and the same equipment is used. The only difference with regular voting lies in the voting deadlines, which are determined by each state.
Absentee ballot
Although this mechanism became popular in the 2020 elections (marked by health risks), the truth is that voting by mail has been used since the Civil War. This form of voting is subdivided into absentee voting and universal voting by mail.
As for the first way, you can make use of this if the voter does not want to vote on November 5 or has any impediment to doing so.
Not all Americans can apply to this process and some states require a valid excuse to opt for this method.. In total, 28 states have already adopted “no-excuse absentee voting.”
The way to make this type of vote effective begins with the sending, by the state electoral authorities, of the ballot to the voter through the USPS postal service.
“Along with the ballot, a security envelope is sent to preserve your electoral selection and another to place the ballot inside, duly sealed. The voter places his signature on the outside of the second envelope to certify his status as a registered voter.explains the Brookings research center.
When the voter sends their ballot to the electoral authorities, they are in charge of verifying the registration and voting place according to the registry to which it belongs. Only until the day of voting are these votes counted and added to those made at the polls.
Universal voting by mail has the same implementation as absentee voting, with the distinction that an excuse is not necessary. Washington DC, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington are the states that allow elections to be carried out entirely under this mechanism.
The United States guarantees the security of voting by mail
The Brennan Center for Justice assures that voting by mail is one of the most accurate methods to vote.In order to preserve the integrity and security of the votes, each state has mechanisms for this purpose.
States have a ballot signature verification mechanism and election staff are trained to analyze and compare signatures across multiple records. It also gives the option to track the shipment of the vote to prevent it from being lost or tampered with in transit.
