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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

early voter, American elections, paper ballot, political engagement

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Political Science

Abstract

Early voting is a rapidly-growing development in American elections. This trend includes both absentee voting, in which a voter submits an application to have a paper ballot mailed to his or her home, or in-person early voting, in which a voter may cast a ballot at an official polling place before the designated election day. Absentee voting was first used during the Civil War to allow military personnel stationed away from their home polling locations to cast their ballots, and most states only made this option available to the general voting populace in the last half of the twentieth century. Early voting, on the other hand, began in Texas in the 1980s. Although absentee voting is still more widely used, early voting has been growing at a rate eight times faster than that of absentee voting.

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