Enter the labyrinth of pre-Election Day voting as the 2024 election season gets underway in critical states across America.
Many Americans yearn for a simple, one-day election. For now, though, national elections are sprawling, weeks-long “election seasons” that differ significantly from place to place.
Voting in America’s major battleground states is varied and, in some cases, controversial. All seven allow for “no-excuse” absentee or mail-in voting, meaning any registered voter can vote by mail (without needing an excuse such as disability or unavailability). Virtually all permit drop boxes.
Less controversially, under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), ballots are often sent to military and overseas voters weeks earlier than other voters.
In-person early voting will start throughout most battlegrounds by mid to late October.
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have no formal in-person early voting. However, voters there, as in most other battleground states, can deliver mail-in ballots by hand to local election offices and drop boxes.
Under Pennsylvania law, counties in that state could normally have initiated mail-in ballot processing as early as Sept. 16, fifty days ahead of Election Day, on Nov. 5.
However, challenges to candidates’ nominations have kept Pennsylvania’s Department of State from confirming the certified candidates.
The start of mail-in voting in the Keystone State is still up in the air.
“When we receive the certified list, we will announce the date that absentee and mail-in ballots will be available through social media and an announcement on our website,” Stephanie Reid, director of election administration for Philadelphia, told The Epoch Times via email.
In Wisconsin, ballot drop boxes outside municipal clerk offices were illegal until July 2024, when the state supreme court overruled its 2022 decision restricting them.
Read on to learn more about pre-Election Day voting in seven 2024 battleground states.
Arizona
In-person early voting begins on Oct. 9, 27 days before Election Day. It lasts until Nov. 1 at 7 p.m.
An emergency early voting period begins on Nov. 1 and lasts through 5 p.m. on Nov. 4, the day before Election Day, for voters who are “experiencing an emergency between 5 p.m. on the Friday preceding the election and 5 p.m. on the Monday preceding the election.”
