Early in-person voting begins in three key states

(WASHINGTON) — The 2024 voting season officially kicked off Friday, as voters in three states can now line up at early voting polling sites or election offices to cast their ballot.

Early in-person voting sites opened throughout Virginia, on Friday, marking the first state to offer their voters that option. The state’s early voting sites will remain open until Nov. 2.

Over 1,796,000 votes were cast early in person in Virginia in the last presidential election, roughly 40% of the total vote, according to data from the Virginia Department of Elections. An additional 962,877 Virginia voters cast their 2020 ballot through the mail, with roughly 574,000 submitting their mail-in ballot before Election Day, according to the election data.

While the voters will be lining up at the polls in Virginia, voters in two other states will have the opportunity, starting Friday, to cast their ballot in person through a different method.

Minnesota and South Dakota are among 23 states that allow voters to hand in their absentee ballots in person to an election office or other designated location instead of mailing them.

In the last presidential election, over 1.9 million Minnesota voters voted via absentee, with 1.7 million of those ballots being returned before election day, according to the state’s Office of the Secretary of State.

Roughly 57% of the total Minnesota 2020 election ballots were cast before Election Day, according to the state data.

The office does not have data on the number of 2020 voters who opted to hand in their absentee ballot to an office.

Roughly 83,000 South Dakota voters cast their ballot through in-person absentee drop-off before Election Day in 2020, according to South Dakota’s secretary of state office.

Voters in a handful of other states who requested an absentee ballot can soon start checking their mailboxes, as this weekend also marks the deadline for some election offices to begin sending out their absentee ballots.

Idaho, Maryland, New York and West Virginia are all required to send out their absentee ballots Friday to all voters who requested one, according to the respective states’ election offices.

North Carolina must send out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters on Friday, according to the state’s election office.

Delaware, Indiana, New Jersey and Tennessee are required to send absentee ballots to their voters by Saturday, according to the states’ respective election offices. Some counties in Oklahoma may start sending their paper ballots to voters on that day, too, according to the state’s election office.

Experts predict there will be a large number of early voters this election season as the voting method has risen in popularity.

During the 2020 election, more than 69% of votes cast in the election were done through either mail-in ballots or early in-person voting, according to election data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab.

By comparison, only 40% voted early in the 2016 election and 33% in the 2012 election, the data showed.