Early in-person voting for the U.S. presidential election is underway in several states, including the battleground states of Florida and Colorado.

Polling places opened Monday in 50 counties in Florida, including the state’s largest counties, Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach. In Colorado, early voting centers opened Monday morning in all 64 counties across the state.

Also Monday, polling places began opening in Alaska, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Texas.

Vote by mail

Early voting by mail has been underway for weeks in many states. However, in-person early voting recently began in some states, allowing people to travel to voting centers to cast their ballots, in much the same way as voting on Election Day. So far, more than 5 million ballots have been cast.

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia offer some in-person early voting, while many others allow absentee mail-in voting without having to provide an excuse for not being able to come to the polls.

Three states, Oregon, Washington and now Colorado, have enacted a vote-by-mail system in which all registered voters receive their ballots in the mail several weeks before Election Day. Voters can then mail their ballots back or drop them off at designated collection points through Election Day.

Recent data from the Pew Research Center indicates that early voting totals this election may well swell beyond 50 million, the most ever. That would be a significant proportion of the overall voter turnout, which is estimated at 130 million ballots.

More voters opt to vote early

In 1996, about 10 percent of voters used an alternative voting methods, either voting early or casting absentee ballots, according to U.S. Census data. Four years ago, in the last presidential election, that figure had tripled, to nearly 33 percent.

And in some individual states, that number is much higher. More than half of the ballots cast in the 2012 election in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Montana, New Mexico and Tennessee were either early or absentee, according to Pew researchers.

Unlike most democracies, the U.S. does not have a centrally administered electoral system, meaning each state, and in some cases, even each county, determines how and when residents can vote.

Absentee voting began more than a century ago during the American Civil War, as a way for soldiers in combat to send their ballots back home. By the mid-20th century, most states had adopted some form of absentee voting, although it was restricted, usually requiring specific evidence that a voter was unable to cast a ballot in person on Election Day.

California, Oregon and Washington were among the first states in the 1970s and 1980s to allow voters to choose to cast absentee ballots without providing a specific reason. Monday, 27 states and the District of Columbia allow “no excuse” absentee voting for their residents.

Regardless of how or where they vote, more and more Americans are acting early on their electoral choices. This has begun to alter political parties’ traditional campaign exhortations for everyone to get out and vote on Election Day.

Apart from the convenience early voting offers to most people, the trend can either help or hurt candidates whose campaigns peak just before Election Day. Campaign rhetoric during the last weeks before voting day this year will have relatively little or no effect on large numbers of voters.

Obama: Trump 'proves himself unfit' for presidency every day

President Barack Obama said Sunday in the race to take over his job, Republican candidate Donald Trump "proves himself unfit for this office every single day."

Obama backs fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 election, and spoke in support of her at an event in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly complained that the election process is rigged against him, something Obama said means Trump is losing.

"And, by the way, it means you don't have what it takes to do this job because there are a bunch of times where it gets tough," Obama said. "There are a lot of times where things don't go your way. And you have to be able to hang in there."

Clinton had a similar message at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina, saying that despite policy and principle differences with many previous presidents and candidates she has never before questioned whether they were fit to lead the country.

"This is not like anybody else who has ever run for president, who has demonstrated unequivocally that he is unqualified and unfit to be president and commander-in-chief of the United States of America," she said.

Trump was in Naples, Florida, Sunday where he touted his proposal to address corruption while raising questions about Clinton's conduct while in public office. Clinton has most notably faced questions about her use of a private email system during her time as secretary of state, something she has said was a mistake.

Analysts have said Democrats stand a better chance of regaining the Senate than the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a bigger majority.

The ABC poll said Clinton has moved to a commanding 20-point edge among female voters, 55-35, and an even bigger lead among college-educated women, 62-30. ABC also said that for the first time in its polling during the long campaign, men also favor her candidacy, 44-41. Trump is leading among white voters, still a majority of U.S. voters but a declining share of the U.S. electorate, by four percentage points, but non-whites favor Clinton by a huge margin, 68-14. (Source: VOA News)

Story Date: October 25, 2016