Fighting misinformation on early vote, and making more data available

Early voting is critical to voter turnout and participation, and it’s key to strengthening our democracy. Early voting options make it possible for hard working Americans to cast their ballots, while still juggling everything else they need to do, including working and caring for their families. At Alloy, we’re committed to helping more Americans register to vote, and participate in the electoral process, and we know that in the midst of a global pandemic, early vote will play an even greater role than it has in recent elections. So with all the misinformation coming from the President himself about mail in ballots, including from the debate stage in Cleveland last night, we wanted to clear up some basic facts while making sure that our partners know we’re going to make more data available to them.

We want to see every voter empowered and able to cast their ballot, and to support our partners as they work to turn out the vote. That’s why we’re putting our acquisition team to work to make raw early vote data from key battleground states available to partner organizations.

So let’s start with the facts. First, options for early vote and “early vote data” can vary by state — when we refer to “early vote data” we mean data provided by state or county election authorities related to voting methods that enable a registered voter to cast their ballot before Election Day. There are different methods for voting early with some states offering many options, while other states offer only a few.

One common source of confusion when it comes to early voting is the difference between vote-by-mail and absentee voting, which is all about the specific ballot involved. Some states allow registered voters to vote their regular election day ballot by mail. A few states (e.g., Utah, Colorado, and Oregon) even conduct their elections entirely by mail-in ballots. Both of these scenarios are often referred to as “vote-by-mail.” Absentee ballots are a type of ballot for voters unable to get to a polling location on Election Day. Some states require an excuse to receive an absentee ballot such as poor health or work commitments. Other states allow for “no excuse” absentee ballots, and any voter can request an absentee ballot. Voters in the military and voters living overseas receive absentee ballots each election.

In addition to these vote-through-the-mail methods, some states allow absentee ballots to be cast in person either at an election authority’s office (e.g., county clerk, town clerk, etc.) or at a polling location where voters can vote an absentee ballot in a similar fashion as they would vote at a polling place on Election Day. These early vote polling centers are usually open a week or two before Election Day, or longer. In fact, some states already have early voting underway.

Here’s what’s key: both absentee ballots and vote-by-mail ballots are as safe and secure as voting in person on Election Day, despite what the President says.

With the country still gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more voters are choosing these early voting methods. In Wisconsin alone 200,000 more voters have already requested an absentee ballot for the General Election than did so in 2016.

However, requesting a ballot early is one thing, getting it in on time and accepted by a state’s election authority is another. In 2016, more than 615,000 Florida voters requested a vote-by-mail ballot, but failed to return the ballot in time to be counted. Of these Florida voters, 265,120 were Democrats. Donald Trump won Florida by just over 110,000 votes.

We want to see every voter empowered and able to cast their ballot, and to support our partners as they work to turn out the vote. That’s why we’re putting our acquisition team to work to make raw early vote data from key battleground states available to partner organizations. Early vote data available from Alloy in 2020 will be a direct pass-through of the early vote data provided by states.

We hope this saves our partner organizations time requesting these files themselves, and allows them to focus on contacting voters to help voters get their absentee and vote-by-mail ballots in on time.

Each state provides a different amount of early vote data, so frequency of updates and the detail of the data will vary by state. Raw early vote data from Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Georgia, and Virginia is available right now, and we plan to provide raw early vote data for Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, and Florida as soon as these states make the data available.

If you’re not already one of our partners, get in touch with us at partnerships@alloy.us, and let’s get to work!

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Jake London is a Project Manager focusing on Data Acquisitions at Alloy.