The Expansion of Voting Before Election Day, 2000–2024

Watch the Webinar: NPR Correspondent Miles Parks joined CEIR’s Executive Director David Becker and Research Director Chris Mann to discuss the key points and takeaways from this report.

Research by: Kyle Yoder, April Tan, & Stefan Martinez-Ruiz

Overview

The last two decades have seen a large expansion in the number of states offering options to vote before election day, from 24 states in 2000 to 46 states in 2024. Put another way: In the 2000 general election, 40% of all voting-age citizens lived in states that offered at least one option for voting before election day—such as early in-person voting or mail ballots. As of this writing, nearly 97% of all voting-age citizens will live in states that will offer at least one option to vote before election day in the 2024 election.

The map below shows the options to vote early in-person and by mail in each state and Washington, D.C., in each presidential election since 2000.

Options to Vote Before Election Day, 2000-2024

In the 2000 general election, 24 states offered all voters the opportunity to vote early in person; 21 of these states also offered all voters the option to vote by mail without needing to cite an eligible reason. These 24 states accounted for 40% of the citizen voting age population in 2000. In the upcoming 2024 general election, 46 states and Washington, D.C., will offer all voters the opportunity to vote early in person; 36 states and Washington, D.C., will also offer all voters the option to vote by mail without the need to cite a reason. These 46 states account for nearly 97% of the current citizen voting age population.

Defining Terms. This report uses the term “early in-person voting” to refer to voting that is available to all voters and conducted in person before the day of the election. This includes policies referred to by states as early voting, in-person no-excuse absentee voting, and advanced voting. Similarly, this report uses the term “mail voting” to refer to voting where all voters are eligible to receive their ballot via mail, including policies referred to by states as all-mail voting and no-excuse absentee by mail.

While the details of voting before election day vary by state, the availability of options to vote before election day has expanded across the nation since the 2000 general election. In each period between each presidential election from 2000 to 2024, more states enacted new laws or built on existing policies to drive this expansion. More details regarding individual states and policy changes between each election may be found in the full report at the link above.

Benefits of Expanding Options to Vote Before Election Day

Options to vote before election day bolster election integrity and provide eligible voters more opportunity to cast a ballot. When most voters cast their ballot on election day, any problem can have an outsized effect. A simple technical problem on election day may lead to a loss of voter confidence or even disenfranchisement. Any disinformation spread on election day could affect voters in ways that are difficult to correct by the time the polls close. By contrast, when voting is spread out over several days, election officials can detect issues earlier, mitigate challenges more easily, and offer a greater number of options to any voters who may be impacted. Disinformation can be mitigated, enabling voters to vote another day. Voters can also decide to vote at another time if issues lead to long lines, closed polling places, or similar problems. Put simply, research has demonstrated that more options to vote before election day mean more opportunities to identify and counteract any human error, machine breakdown, power outage, cyberattack, rumor campaign, or other potential issue that may arise.[1]

Early in-person and mail voting options are also widely popular across states in every region and of every partisan stripe. State legislatures and governors from both major parties have passed legislation creating and expanding options to vote before election day over several decades, and research repeatedly affirms that such policies do not advantage one party more than the other.[2] What’s more, options to vote early in-person and by mail have grown in popularity among voters nationwide over time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the proportion of ballots cast before election day increased steadily from 2000 to 2022. In 2000, 14% of ballots were cast before election day. Voting before election day rose to 21% of ballots cast in 2004, 31% in 2008, 33% in 2012, and 40% in 2016—then jumped to 69% during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, before returning to the long-term trend with 50% of ballots cast before election day in 2022.[3] This trend toward increasing numbers of ballots cast before election day is expected to continue with the 2024 general election, although probably not (yet) repeating the peak seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How CEIR Measured Growth in States with Option to Vote Before Election Day

To trace the expansion of options to vote before election day nationwide since the 2000 general election, the CEIR research team reviewed the enacting or extant legislation and legislative history for relevant voting methods—such as early voting and mail voting—in each state. This data was then cross-referenced with state government sources, news articles, other research publications, and policy survey responses from Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) reports published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

This report focuses on the voter experience for each presidential year general election. Where the impacts of a given law on voter experience were obscure or ambiguous, the research team relied on the interpretation of state election officials. For the 2020 general election, this report categorizes states according to the options available to voters on November 3, 2020, including temporary expansions during the COVID-19 emergency. In February 2024, a trial judge in the Delaware Superior Court declared the state’s early voting law to be in violation of the state constitution.[4] This report reflects this change, though this decision may be subject to appeal before the 2024 general election.

All information in this report regarding the 2024 general election is current as of February 26, 2024, and may be subject to change in response to legislation, litigation, or other developments as the election approaches. Voters should visit vote.gov or ask their local election officials to confirm dates, locations, and procedures for early in-person and mail voting in their area.

This report expands upon CEIR’s previous work on voting before election day: Voting Before Election Day (October 2022) and How Easy Is It to Vote Early in Your State? (April 2021). We are grateful for the inquiry from Miles Parks, a journalist from National Public Radio, about past availability of options to vote before election day that prompted us to undertake this research on the policy trend over time.

Additional Resources and Citations

Additional information and perspectives on this topic are available at the following resources:

• The Pew Charitable Trusts, “Non-Precinct Place Voting,” https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/0001/01/01/nonprecinct-place-voting.
• MIT Election Data and Science Lab, “How We Voted in 2022: A Topical Look at the Survey of the Performance of American Elections,” https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2023-05/How-We-Voted-In-2022.pdf.

[1] Patrick Howell O’Neill, “Why More, Earlier Voting Means Greater Election Security-Not Less,” MIT Technology Review, December 14, 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/10/1013584/expanding-voting-access-improves-election-security/.

[2] Research repeatedly shows that the availability of options to vote before election day do not confer a consistent advantage to either party, despite partisan rhetoric attempting to shape voter choices about different voting methods. For more, see Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum, Peter A. Miller, and Daniel Toffey, “Convenience Voting,” The Annual Review of Political Science 11 (June 2008): 437-455, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053006.190912; Daniel M. Thompson, Jennifer A. Wu, Jesse Yoder, and Andrew B. Hall, “Universal vote-by-mail has no impact on partisan turnout or vote share,” PNAS 117, no. 25 (June 2020): 14052-14056, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007249117; Jesse Yoder, Cassandra Handan-Nader, Andrew Myers, Tobias Nowacki, Daniel M. Thompson, Jennifer A Wu., Chenoa Yorgason, and Andrew B. Hall, “How did absentee voting affect the 2020 U.S. election?” Science Advances 7, no. 52 (December 2021), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abk1755; Paul S. Herrnson and Charles Stewart, III, “The Impact of COVID-19, Election Policies, and Partisanship on Voter Participation in the 2020 U.S. Election,” Election Law Journal 22, no. 2 (June 2023), https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2022.0074.

[3] Charles Stewart, III, “How We Voted in 2022: A Topical Look at the Survey of the Performance of American Elections,” MIT Election Data and Science Lab, May 23, 2023, https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2023-05/How-We-Voted-In-2022.pdf.

[4] Menella v. Albence., C. A. S23C-03-014 MHC (Del. Super. Ct. 2024).