US Election: Early voting starts in America’s most critical presidential election

Americans began casting their first in-person votes on Friday for a presidential election scheduled for six weeks from now, which leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties have described as the most significant in generations.

The stakes are substantial: Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside other party leaders, has labelled Republican nominee Donald Trump a threat to democracy, while Trump has argued that his victory is necessary to rescue the country from Democratic control.

In-person voting begins a six-week lead-up to Election Day on 5th November, signalling the approaching end of an intensely divisive campaign. Over the past two months, Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats' nominee, and Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, with a second suspected one occurring on Sunday at his golf club in Florida.

Many states offer early in-person voting options, with Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota being the first to start, and more states set to follow by mid-October. Despite his previous scepticism towards early voting, Trump’s Republican National Committee has endorsed the practice this year, viewing it as a strategic means to secure votes in advance, given that factors like weather could affect turnout on Election Day.

Democrats have historically capitalised on early voting, amassing millions of votes in previous elections. In 2018, they accounted for 41% of early votes in the 24 states providing partisan data, compared to Republicans' 35.1%, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida. By 2022, the gap widened, with Democrats representing 42.5% of early votes and Republicans 33.8%.

Early voting sites opened across Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota on Friday, officially kicking off the 2024 election season. Footage shared by MSNBC showed eager voters queuing in Virginia to cast their ballots at early voting sites and election offices. Virginia’s early voting locations will remain open until 2nd November. Minnesota and South Dakota also offered in-person voting from Friday, but through a different system, allowing voters to hand-deliver absentee ballots to election offices or designated locations, instead of posting them. These two states are among 23 that permit such a process.

Before Friday's in-person voting, Alabama became the first state to dispatch mail-in ballots on 11th September, one of ten states that send mail ballots to voters over 45 days ahead of Election Day. According to law, military and overseas ballots must be sent 45 days prior to Election Day, with this year’s deadline falling on 21st September.

Voter registration deadlines are determined individually by each state. With early voting becoming increasingly popular over the last decade, experts predict a high turnout of early voters this election cycle. During the 2020 election, over 69% of votes were cast via mail-in or early in-person voting, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab. This was a sharp rise from 40% in the 2016 election and 33% in 2012.