56% of Americans favor expanded vote by mail: Poll

Beyza Binnur Donmez

ANKARA (AA) - Americans' support for vote-by-mail is rising as many US states search for a safe way to hold November elections amid the coronavirus outbreak, according to an AP-NORC poll released Monday.

The poll showed that 56% of Americans favor their state allowing people to vote by mail without needing to provide a reason, while 26% oppose it.

Although voting online and conducting elections using only mail-in ballots without any in-person voting have garnered less support – 40% and 39%, respectively – there has been a considerable rise in support for these methods since September 2018, when they were favored by 28% and 19%, respectively.

Republicans generally prefer in-person voting compared to other methods with 58%, while Democrats support no-excuse absentee voting with 73%, mail-in only voting by 60%, and online voting with 50%.

According to the poll, Republicans are more concerned than Democrats, 64% against 29%, that people who are not eligible to vote will do so if allowed to mail in their ballots.

The nationwide AP-NORC poll was conducted between April 16 and 20, over online and telephone interviews with 1,057 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Democrats have recently pushed to expand vote-by-mail for the election to secure social distancing guidelines, but the idea drew fire from Donald Trump, claiming it promoted fraud, but failing to cite any evidence.

The US continues to lead in COVID-19 cases and virus-linked deaths worldwide. Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University's running tally counted over 967,500 infections and nearly 55,000 deaths with over 107,000 recoveries.