Just days before the US presidential election, millions of mail ballots have yet to be returned in key battleground states, and election officials warn that time is running out for voters who want to avoid a polling place on election day.
At least 35 million mail ballots had been returned or accepted as of early Wednesday, according to data collected by The Associated Press.
That surpasses the 33.3 million total mail ballots returned during the 2016 election, according to the US Election Assistance Commission..
Photo: AFP
Yet an estimated 1.9 million ballots were still outstanding in Florida, along with 962,000 in Nevada, 850,000 in Michigan and 1 million in Pennsylvania. In most states, the deadline for ballots to be received is election day.
“Don’t wait until election day,” Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf told voters this week. “Hand-delivering your own ballot now will give you the peace of mind that your vote will be counted, and your voice will be heard in this historic election.”
Combined with early, in-person voting, at least 71.5 million votes have already been cast, more than the total number of advance votes four years ago.
Many states made it easier to request a mail ballot this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about crowded polling places on election day.
One challenge has been ensuring that voters who are not used to voting absentee return their ballots in time to be counted.
Compounding concerns are mail delivery delays that have persisted across the country.
Delivery data from the US Postal Service does not offer much assurance that these ballots are going to reach their destinations if they have not already been mailed.
Throughout the fall, as ballots moved through the postal system, the agency has consistently missed its goal to have more than 95 percent of first-class mail delivered within five days.
In the week that ended Oct. 16, the most recently available weekly figures, the Postal Service reported a national on-time delivery rate of 85.5 percent.
Postal districts in many presidential battleground states failed to reach even that mark.
The district that covers the eastern part of Michigan, which includes Detroit and its suburbs, has had one of the country’s worst delivery rates — just 71.5 percent of first-class mail was on-time in the middle of this month.
Michigan’s top election official was among those warning it was too late to try to return a ballot in the mail and urging voters to use an official drop box or to return their ballot in person at their local election office.
The state’s ballot deadline is 8pm on election day. The same deadline holds for Wisconsin, after the US Supreme Court rebuffed a Democratic effort to extend it.
Nevada voters have more time to return their ballots, which are not due until Nov. 10 if postmarked by Election Day.
In Florida, 4 million of a record 6 million mail-in ballots requested had been returned as of Wednesday morning.
The state was on pace to eclipse the return rate of 2016, when 81 percent of 3.3 million requested mail-in ballots were returned.
In Pennsylvania, the crush of mail-in votes is a record, more than 10 times the number received by counties in 2016’s presidential election.
The current deadline for ballots in Pennsylvania to be received is three days after the election.
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