Most Americans used to vote on Election Day, and a small percentage of voters cast their ballots as absentee voters through the mail. That changed starting in the late 1970s, when some states began to allow no-excuse absentee voting and early in-person voting. Many more states chose to add these methods after the 2000 election, and by 2022, 60% of votes were cast in person at a polling place on Election Day, 21% were cast by mail and 19% were cast early in-person.
In the 2020 election, many states accelerated the shift already underway to voting by mail to keep people safe from contracting COVID-19. Mail ballots were the dominant method of return that year: 43% of ballots were voted by mail, 31% on Election Day and 26% early in-person. Voting by mail remains the second-most common method of returning ballots and will continue to grow – though it may never reach the level of 2020.
This rise in usage has created an issue that wasn’t seen much before: The need to “fix” a ballot where, due to a variety of reasons, the identity of the voter who cast the ballot can’t be verified. This process is called ballot “curing,” and it’s how states ensure that every valid vote is counted.
The Conversation’s politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke about ballot curing with Reed College political scientist Paul Gronke, founder and director of the Elections & Voting Information Center, who studies early voting, election administration, public opinion and elections.
What is ballot curing?
Ballot curing is a process that is allowed in some states that, if a ballot has been rejected or challenged because the signature didn’t match or a copy of an ID needed to be included, then the voter has an opportunity to come in within a limited period of time and cure that problem. They can, for example, come in and provide an updated or corrected........