We Are on Track for the Highest Rates of Voter Turnout Since 1908
More than a third of voters have already cast their ballots
On the first day of early in-person voting in New York, I walked nearly a mile in perfect fall weather to check out the situation in my polling station at a local Boys and Girls Club. It was around 2 p.m. on October 24 — just four hours after the polls had opened — but the line remained dizzyingly long, wrapping around the block to the point where the first and last mask-wearing voters in line overlapped. New Yorkers who voted early reported hours-long waiting times in the subsequent days.
Those same lines had been forming outside polling stations all over the country — in Georgia, Texas, California, Virginia, and beyond. It was a reminder that not even a global pandemic could stop Americans motivated to vote in the 2020 election. More than 99 million people had cast their ballots as of Monday evening, according to the U.S. Elections Project, either through the mail or in person over the past weeks. That means we’re starting Election Day with more than one-third of the nation’s eligible voters having already cast a ballot.
Political scientists say we’re well on the way to record-breaking voter turnout.
