Associated Press: In early primaries, voters favor polling places over mail
Associated Press: In early primaries, voters favor polling places over mail
ATLANTA (AP) — The great vote-by-mail wave appears to be receding just as quickly as it arrived.
After tens of millions of people in the United States opted for mail ballots during the pandemic election of 2020, voters in early primary states are returning in droves to in-person voting this year.
In Georgia, one of the mostly hotly contested states, about 85,000 voters had requested mail ballots for the May 24 primary, as of Thursday. That is a dramatic decrease from the nearly 1 million who cast mail ballots in the state’s 2020 primary at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The trend was similar in Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, which held primaries this month; comparisons were not available for Nebraska, another early primary state.
A step back in mail balloting was expected given easing concerns about COVID-19, but some election officials and voting experts had predicted that far more voters would seek out the convenience of mail voting once they experienced it. …
In Georgia, voting groups are concerned that a new earlier deadline to request a mail ballot will trip up voters if they wait too long. They also are closely watching the rate of ballot rejections. About 1,000 mail ballot applications have been rejected so far, or about 1.2% of all applications received. That is a lower rate than the 2018 primary and slightly higher than the 2020 elections.
“People are believing political propaganda and not understanding this is creating more hurdles to voting,” said Aunna Dennis, the group’s executive director.