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| Photo Credit: AP. |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In-person voting for the midterm elections opened Friday in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming, kicking off a six-week sprint to Election Day in a landscape that has changed much since the pandemic drove a shift to mail balloting in the 2020 presidential contest.
Twenty
people voted in the first hour as Minneapolis opened its early voting center,
taking advantage of generous rules that election officials credit with making
Minnesota a perennial leader in voter turnout. First in when the doors opened
was Conrad Zbikowski, a 29-year-old communications and digital consultant who
said he has voted early since at least 2017.
“I like to
vote early because you never know what might happen on Election Day,” said
Zbikowski, displaying his civic pride with a T-shirt that bore the sailboat logo
of the City of Lakes. “You might get sick, you might get COVID, you might get
in a car crash, there’s many things that can happen. But what you do have
control over is being able to vote early and getting that ballot in.”
The start of
in-person voting comes as the nation continues to grapple with the fallout from
nearly two years of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen
from former President Donald Trump due to widespread fraud and manipulation of
voting machines. Those conspiracy theories, promoted by a constellation of
Trump allies in the campaign, on social media and at conferences held across
the country, have taken a toll on public confidence in U.S. elections.
They’ve also
led to tightening of rules that govern mail ballots in several Republican-led
states as well as an exodus of experienced election workers, who have faced an
onslaught of harassment and threats since the 2020 election.
But nearly
two years since that election, no evidence has emerged to suggest widespread
fraud or manipulation while reviews in state after state have upheld the
results showing President Joe Biden won.
Saturday
also is the deadline by which election officials must send ballots to their
military and overseas voters. North Carolina started mailing out absentee
ballots Sept. 9.
Early
in-person voting is offered in 46 states and the District of Columbia,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. States may use
different ways to describe it, with some calling it in-person absentee voting
or advanced voting. In some cases, it mirrors Election Day voting with polling
locations equipped with poll workers and voting machines. Elsewhere, it involves
voters requesting, completing and submitting an absentee ballot in person at
their local election office.
Early voting
periods vary by state, with some offering as few as three days and others
extending to 46 days. The average is 23 days, according to the conference of
legislatures.
This year,
voting will unfold in a much different environment than two years ago, when the
coronavirus prompted a major increase in the use of mail ballots as voters
sought to avoid crowded polling places. States adopted policies to promote mail
voting, with a few states opting to send mail ballots to all registered voters
and others expanding the use of drop boxes.
While some
have made those changes permanent, others have rolled back them back. For
instance, Georgia will have fewer drop boxes this year and has added ID
requirements to mail ballots under legislation pushed by Republican state
lawmakers.
Minnesota’s
ballot includes races for governor and other statewide offices, with control of
the Legislature at stake, too.
Zbikowski
declined to say for whom he voted. But he said he doesn’t take the right to
vote for granted, given that his family came to America from Russia when it
didn’t have free elections. As a part-time poll worker — he was off-duty
Friday— he said he’s seen Minnesota’s safeguards firsthand and has full
confidence in the integrity of the process.
Other early
voters included first-timers Ronald Johnson and his wife, Judith Weyl, who
voted on Election Day in 2020. They both said they voted a straight Democratic
ticket.
“It just feels like this election is so
important, life is so busy, I just wanted to have closure on this as quickly as
possible,” Johnson said.
Johnson, a
74-year-old mental health counselor, said he wanted to support candidates who
will preserve a Minnesota election system that he said has integrity.
He said he
“absolutely” supports the state’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State
Steve Simon, over GOP challenger Kim Crockett, who has called the 2020 election
a “train wreck” and has advocated for a return to voting mostly on Election
Day. Simon, in contrast, calls the 2020 election “fundamentally fair, honest,
accurate and secure,” and defends the changes that he oversaw to make voting safer
in the pandemic.
“We really
care about protecting democracy,” said Weyl, 73.
Aaron
Bommarito, a 48-year-old teacher who also said he voted a straight Democratic
ticket, said he has no concerns about his votes being counted properly and has
“absolute confidence in the system.” He said voting early was a spur-of-the
moment decision. He just happened to be driving by the voting center and seized
the moment.
“I dropped
my two kids off at school, and the ‘Vote Here’ sign was the next thing I saw,”
he said.
Cassidy
reported from Atlanta.