Voting by mail and absentee voting

Americans have traditionally voted in neighborhood polling places, but since the 1980s, many states have eased rules on issuing absentee ballots, allowed voters to cast ballots in person before Election Day, or even begun mailing ballots to all voters.

The movement to vote by mail reached new levels with the 2020 elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, and although it subsequently declined by more than 10 points in 2022 and an additional 3 points in 2024, 29 percent of voters chose to cast their ballots this way in 2024, above prepandemic levels.

This explainer was last updated on Jun 24, 2026.

Introduction

Absentee voting and voting by mail have generally been viewed as synonymous in the United States because historically, absentee ballots were distributed by mail only to voters temporarily away from their homes.. For this reason, both topics are explained here. The figure below shows the percentage of voters who cast their ballots since 1996 by each of the three major modes of voting—in person on Election Day, in person before Election Day, and by mail/absentee. The statistics are based on self-reports by respondents to the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). (The data for 2020 are based on responses to the Survey of the Performance of American Elections.)

Line graph showing voting mode usage from 1996-2024. The modes depicted include voting on Election Day, voting by mail/absentee, and voting early in person.

The rise in voting by mail (VBM) raises several important academic and policy issues. Does widening eligibility criteria for vote-by-mail increase turnout? Does an increased rate of voting by mail decrease civic engagement, or decrease the impact of an “October surprise,” that is, an event at the end of a political campaign intended to affect the outcome? How does the process of counting votes cast by mail impact when we know the winners of an election?

History and Expansion

The idea that ballots could be cast anywhere other than a physical precinct close to a voter’s home hasn’t always been embraced in the United States (it is used in about a quarter of nations worldwide, including much of Europe and North America). What we now call absentee voting first arose during the Civil War, when Union and Confederate soldiers were allowed to cast ballots from their battlefield units and have them be counted back home.

Absentee voting became a point of contention during World War II, when Congress passed laws in 1942 and 1944 related to soldiers stationed overseas. Both laws became embroiled in controversies over states’ rights and the voting rights of African Americans in southern states, so their effectiveness was muted. Subsequent laws, particularly the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), enacted in 1986, and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act enacted in 2009, have been more effective in encouraging voting by active service members through absentee voting.

States began passing absentee ballot laws for civilians in the late 1800s. The first laws were intended to accommodate voters who were away from home or seriously ill on Election Day. The number of absentee ballots distributed was relatively small, and the administrative apparatus was not designed to distribute a significant number.

In the 1980s, California became the first state to allow eligible voters to request absentee ballots for any reason at all, including their convenience. By 2026, 28 states adopted no-excuse absentee laws, and an additional 8 states and the District of Columbia conduct all-mail elections. The figure below classifies states according to their absentee/mail ballot regimes. According to data in the 2024 Current Population Survey (CPS), an average of 22.1% of voters in no-excuse states cast their ballots by mail, compared to an average of 5.2% in states that still required an excuse.

Absentee Ballot Regimes in the United States

Map of the United States showing the use of mail ballots. States are divided into all mail, no-excuse absentee, and excuse required states. Data is from the National Conference of State Legislatures. — *Note that at the time of publication, Connecticut has recently passed *a bill allowing no-excuse absentee voting,* *which may subsequently be signed into law by the governor.*

*Note that at the time of publication, Connecticut has recently passed a bill allowing no-excuse absentee voting, which may subsequently be signed into law by the governor.

The 2020 election season saw further expansions in voting by mail, as many states temporarily altered their absentee/mail ballot laws to grant greater access to mail balloting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result was a significant increase in voting by mail for 2020, reflected clearly in the first figure.

VBM: The Oregon System

In a referendum that passed in 1998, Oregon went a step further than California’s no-excuse absentee voting by agreeing to issue all its ballots by mail. Washington followed suit in 2011, and Colorado in 2013. More recently, these states were joined by Hawaii and Utah, which passed laws to begin voting by mail permanently with the 2020 election. While they have not made the complete switch to an all-vote-by-mail system, California, D.C., Nevada, New Jersey, and Vermont mailed ballots to all voters in 2020, as a COVID-related adaptation. (In the same year, Montana allowed counties to decide whether to mail ballots to all registered voters in their county.) While many of these changes have persisted, as of 2026 New Jersey no longer conducts all-mail elections in all districts.

It's important to note that although Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and Utah now distribute all their ballots by mail, voters do not return them all by mail. According to responses to the 2024 SPAE, 21% of mail ballots were returned to some physical location such as a drop box or local election office. Thus, it's more accurate to describe these states as “distribute ballots by mail” states.

Administrative Issues

The expansion of absentee and mail voting has been the source of some controversy. Perhaps the most important issues have been the question of whether expanding VBM opportunities increases voter turnout, and concerns over electoral integrity.

Facilitating VBM presumably reduces the costs of voting for most citizens, so one would expect it to increase turnout, yet the scientific literature on this empirical question about turnout is mixed. An early study of the effects of VBM on turnout in Oregon argued that its implementation had caused turnout to increase by 10%. However, subsequent research has failed to replicate these initial findings. More recent research, using a variety of quasi-experimental methods, suggests the causal effect of VBM on turnout in presidential election years is around 2 percentage points, although it may be as high as 8 points in Colorado. This modest increase is likely driven by lowering the barriers to entry, both by engaging citizens who rarely participate and by encouraging regular voters to vote in less salient elections..

Another concern about VBM is whether it increases voter fraud. Two major features of VBM raise these concerns. First, the ballot is completed outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater. Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is different from that of traditional in-person ballots, raising possible security concerns related both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission.

Documented instances of fraud related to VBM are rare and research finds no reason to believe that fraud is more common in VBM states. While this fraud is rare, there have been documented incidents where voter fraud has occurred in absentee voting. Two of the best-known cases of voter fraud involving absentee voting occurred in 1997 in Georgia and Miami. More recently, a political campaign manager within North Carolina’s ninth Congressional district defrauded voters by collecting unfilled ballots and then filling in the rest of it to favor the campaign’s candidate, which led to the state ultimately holding a new election. However, while some claims of fraud do have substance, many others which receive public attention are eventually found to be baseless.

Finally, skeptics of convenience voting methods such as VBM argue that they encourage voters to cast their ballots before all the information from the campaign is revealed, thus putting early voters at a civic disadvantage. In response, as more voters cast early ballots by mail or in person, campaigns have less incentive to hold onto negative information about their opponents in the hope of gaining an advantage through an October surprise. Empirically, it's important to note that the earliest voters tend to be the strongest partisans and, thus less likely to be swayed by last-minute information.

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