Allowing more people to cast early votes or vote-by-mail is a good way to make voting Covid-secure

With in-person voting presenting a risk to Covid-19 transmission, many states opted to expand mail-in and early voting. The spread of Covid-19 led to 16 Democracy Primaries being postponed or changed to vote-by-mail with the deadline extended.^[1] It was therefore crucial for states to take steps to ensure that the presidential election could go ahead smoothly, without any voter being deterred from voting as a result of fear of infection. The option to cast an early vote in person is also an effective measure to reduce the chance of Covid-19 transmission, as spreading voting over a longer period means voters are less likely to come into close contact with each other. Voting-by-mail is Covid-secure, and in this election only five states require a legitimate reason to vote-by-mail; in all others votes-by-mail are issued automatically or are available to all registered voters who request one.^[2] As a result, it is estimated that 80 million postal votes will be cast ahead of 3rd November, more than double the number in 2016.^[3] Vote-by-mail records are being broken at the state level too, with Texas breaking the state’s record for the most ballots cast on the first day of early voting.^[4] In Florida, before in-person early voting began, 2.5 million votes had been cast by mail and in Georgia, voting-by-mail has increased by 648% from 2016.^[5] The expansion of early in-person voting and voting-by-mail has been hugely successful in enabling levels of democratic engagement that were threatened by Covid-19.