A new Pew Research Center analysis found that the majority (65%) of American voters say that the option to vote early or absentee in the upcoming presidential election should be available to any voter without requiring a documented reason.
The other one-third of voters say that the option should be available but with a reason.
“The prospect of conducting the presidential election during a pandemic has prompted many states to reexamine their plans for how to conduct the election safely,” wrote Vianney Gomez and Bradley Jones in their analysis of the data, which was gathered between June 16-22 but only reported on this week.
There were large gaps between Democrats and Democratic-leaning Americans and Republicans, the survey found. Some 83% of Democrats said that folks should be able to absentee or early vote with “no excuse.” Compare that to Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents, of which only 44% agreed.
However, the Pew analysis pointed out that rather than making Americans more eager to absentee / early vote, rather support for such voting has actually decreased since 2018. In the fall of that year, some 71% of American voters felt that no-excuse absentee voting should be allowed.
The survey also asked if respondents felt that changing rules makes elections less secure. Here there was an even wider gap between Democrats and Republicans.
Some 60% of Americans (including 79% of Democrats) say that changing rules to make it easier to vote would not make elections less secure. However, some 59% of Republicans say changing the rules would make the elections less secure.
Israeli law does not provide for absentee voting except in special circumstances, such as Israelis who are serving the country from abroad.