MENÚ
Presidential elections will be held on November 5th, 2024, but by then millions of people will have voted already. During the last elections of 2020, over 100 million people voted by mail or early before the official Election Day, approx. 65% of the total number of voters in the elections. In 2024, there are states like Pennsylvania where citizens can vote even 50 days before November 5th. Why?
Read this story in Spanish by clicking here.
Many states began to allow absentee ballots in the presidential elections of 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, so that soldiers that were deployed would not lose their right, according to this work about the history of the vote in the United States of the Smithsonian. Since 1984, federal law guarantees that all American members of the military or navy (and their families) can vote, in addition to other citizens that live abroad. However, in the last decades, many other U.S. citizens decide to vote early for other reasons.
What do you need to vote early?
In 36 states and the District of Columbia, any citizen can choose to vote by mail without giving a reason as to why. This is the case of Florida or Nevada, but also California or Arizona, where registered voters get a voting ballot at home, that they can return by mail. The other 14 states allow mail-in voting, but only if you meet certain requirements. In Texas, for example, it’s allowed for people over 65, sick people and people out of their county on election day, among others.
Besides mail-in voting, in 47 states and the District of Columbia there is the option of voting in person before the official Election Day. Voting centers are open in almost all of them at least 10 days before the elections, although in states like California it’s 29 days, 28 in New Mexico, 27 in Arizona, 25 in Virginia... All information about how to register to vote and how and when to vote is available in Spanish at Vote.gov.
If I want to vote in person, can I do it during working hours?
One of the reasons why voting by mail and early have become so popular is because national elections are often on a Tuesday, in the middle of the working week. This represents a problem for a lot of people that need to organize their routine to vote on a working day.
In 30 states and Washington D.C., employers must provide free hours to vote, said in 2022 lawyer and expert in work rights Deidra Nguyen to SHRM, a firm focused on studies and solutions related to human resources management, according to SHRM. On top of that, in 23 of those, those hours cannot be deducted from your salary. This is the case of California, for example, where you can be absent from work for 2 hours, or Arizona, where it’s 3 hours.
In other states, like Florida, Michigan, New Jersey or Virginia, employers don’t have the obligation to give their employees time to vote, according to Workplace Fairness, an organization that gathers information on work rights. In all of those states you can request to vote by mail without having to meet any additional requirements, and it also has voting centers open for at least 9 days before Election Day.
Factchequeadois a verification media outlet built by a Spanish-speaking community to tackle disinformation in the United States Do you want to be part of it? Join us and verify the content you receive by sending it to our WhatsApp +16468736087 or to factchequeado.com/whatsapp.
