With mail-in voting expected to reach record levels due to the coronavirus pandemic, some of the most important voters in this year’s presidential election will be those who cast their ballots from the comfort of their own homes. Among these mail-in voters include many who are voting in their first-ever election.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 1-in-10 eligible voters in this year’s U.S. electorate will come from those in Generation Z, or people born after 1996, which the center said is statistically growing more diverse, educated and politically active than previous generations. Although most members of Gen Z are too young to vote, many will have turned 18 by this year and are voting for the first time. Some of them, like Eric Dayts, a second-year Hunter College student majoring in biochemistry, have already voted, casting absentee ballots by mail in lieu of voting in-person because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The coronavirus was a huge concern for every single person in my family,” said the 20-year-old, first-time Gen Z voter. He said he felt “somewhat helpless” given how the past four years have unfolded while expressing his disapproval of the current White House administration’s time in office. This feeling of helplessness has only worsened for him since the pandemic started. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting more than 230,000 American lives lost to COVID-19, many voters, like Dayts, decided to cast a mail-in ballot this year as a safety measure for their families.
Ted Widmer, who is an American historian, professor and former White House speechwriter, agreed that the pandemic was still too serious for many people to feel safe voting in person this year. “It’s not an effort to game the system, it’s a public health measure,” Widmer said. “And the ways of verifying voter identity are just as good for mail-in ballots as they are for in-person ballots.”
"It's not an effort to game the system, it's a public health measure." – Ted Widmer
The notion that absentee ballots could “game the system” is inevitably at the center of misinformation and disinformation, most notably from President Donald J. Trump himself, who has tried to sow doubt about mail-in voting by citing election integrity and voter fraud concerns.
Professor Widmer, however, said that mail-in voting is “legitimate” and that there has been “a long tradition” of it. “We permit our soldiers when they’re stationed overseas to vote by mail-in ballots,” he said. “If we’re allowing them to vote, we should allow everyone to vote in a time of pandemic when it’s not safe to go out to a crowded place.”
Voters are also worried about their absentee ballots possibly being lost in transit. Maria Campo, a senior at Hunter College majoring in psychology, is one of those first-time voters concerned about the reliability of mail-in voting. Like many people of the 2020 U.S. electorate, Campo was anxious given the recent news about the U.S. Postal Service, including the accusation that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy attempted to “sabotage the election” by implementing cost-cutting measures in July that evidently slowed mail service in several parts of the country.
“We were originally going to mail them, but with everything going on with the USPS, I didn’t have the faith in the post office at that point that my ballot would be delivered and counted,” she explained. Her family ultimately decided to drop their ballots off at an early voting site rather than take their chances with the Postal Service.
Video capturing the long line outside Maria Campo's local early voting site
(Video courtesy of Maria Campo)
First-time voters like Alice Tsai, a 21-year-old Hunter College student majoring in biology, have nevertheless remained unfazed by the misleading information and recent news about mail-in voting, and have actually found the process to be quite simple.
“It’s kind of nice, honestly, having the absentee ballot option for everyone,” she said. “You can do it on your own time; you just get the ballot, you fill it out, drop it off or bring it to a polling location. Whatever’s convenient for you.” Tsai said applying for the ballot was relatively easy, as the instructions online were clear, and that it was just a matter of filling it out and returning it in a timely manner.
Although Tsai got most of her voting information from New York’s official state website, she noticed social media taking a more active role in promoting voter registration. “My mom actually ordered the ballots for my whole family on Facebook,” said Campo. Even though she admitted she was “not really sure how that worked,” she added that she saw platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat offering resources on how to vote. Dayts also noticed an increase in voter registration information while scrolling through his social media feeds recently. “All these apps, it was almost like, as a lot of my friends quoted, ‘shoved down our throats’ to vote,” he said.
Given that some states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will not be able to start counting these ballots until Election Day, according to FiveThirtyEight, mail-in ballots will certainly have an impact in the outcome of this year’s election. Even if election results are contested days after Nov. 3, voters like Campo, Dayts and Tsai remain resilient.
“Voting is kind of the bare minimum that we can do at this point,” Tsai said. “Don’t let them suppress your voice.”
“Voting is kind of the bare minimum that we can do at this point. Don’t let them suppress your voice.” – Alice Tsai
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