Early Voting for 2022 Midterms Starts in September in Nine States

Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire residents had not yet voted in their Sept. 13 primary contests before the first ballots cast in the Nov. 8 general election began arriving in North Carolina post offices on Sept. 10.

The day before, local elections officials across the state began mailing absentee or vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots to the 50,000 voters who requested them. Apparently, it didn’t take long for some to return completed ballots.

North Carolina is the first state in the 2022 midterms elections to dispatch VBM ballots to voters, but it soon won’t be alone. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are among states where officials will do so within days. 

The three are among the 21 states where elections officials by state law must get VBM ballots to voters who requested them no less than 45 days before an election. This year, that would be Sept. 24. 

Some states—such as North Carolina—have tiered deadlines with VBM ballots sent to military and overseas voters weeks before they are mailed to in-state and domestic voters.

With VBM ballots in some states already being mailed, designated polling sites for in-person early voting are set to open in nine states in September—beginning Sept. 19 in Pennsylvania and Sept. 23-24 in South Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota, Vermont, and Virginia.

VBM and in-person during early voting periods are “non-traditional” voting methods that have grown increasingly popular the last two decades. They became mainstream during the pandemic-skewered 2020 election.

More than 69 percent of the record-setting 159.6 million Americans who voted in 2020—101.45 million—cast ballots via these “non-traditional” methods. 

More than 65 million Americans voted by mail (42 percent) and 35.8 million voted early in-person (26 percent), according to an April 2021 analysis of the 2020 election by the U.S. Census Bureau.

All 50 states offer VBM, or absentee, ballot options

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