Fear Trump is challenging mail ballots appears to be flooding early voting sites

Early voting climbs nationwide

More than 22 million Americans had cast ballots by Friday morning, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. More than 45 percent of ballots cast so far came from Democratic voters.

Turnout was also up in several states compared with the same period in 2022. Texas reported a 74 percent increase, Kansas turnout had more than doubled, and Maine and North Carolina each saw increases exceeding 30 percent.

Mail voting declines in states

Ohio received roughly 28 percent fewer mail-in ballot requests this year, while early in-person voting rose nearly 200 percent. In Georgia, election officials had accepted more than 69,000 mail ballots by Thursday, a decline of more than 50 percent from the same point in 2022.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said early voting was setting daily records and described the pattern as evidence of trust in the state’s election process. An NBC News poll this summer found fewer than one-quarter of Democratic voters planned to vote by mail, down by double digits from 2024, when 34 percent said they intended to do so.

Trump’s efforts face setbacks

Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, calling it “inherently corrupt,” “cheating,” “sad” and “crazy.” His proposed plan would have required standardized ballot envelopes and online lists of eligible voters, and allowed the U.S. Postal Service to refuse ballots from states that did not comply.

Postal delays pose another risk

Cost-cutting changes at the Postal Service have led to consolidations of mail-sorting facilities and post offices, which could cause delays, particularly for rural voters. Late delivery could put ballot validity at risk and leave voters too little time to correct errors.

Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, warned Google, Meta, TikTok and X about posts claiming that lawfully cast mail ballots would not be counted. Raskin wrote that such claims were false statements covered by the platforms’ own standards, even when made by senior Republican officials.