There’s a whole lot of noise about threats to the midterm elections, now eight days away. We asked David Becker from the Center for Election Innovation & Research to come back and help us get grounded in logic and facts.
Let’s start with the good news: Becker says we will blow past 30 million votes already cast at some point today.
“The highest turnout we’ve ever had for a midterm election was in 2018, 118 million ballots cast,” Becker said. “So we’re going to blow past 25% of that eight days before the election. And still the vast majority of mail ballots haven’t come back in. No one has voted on Election Day yet. Early voting is still going on in almost all of the 47 states.”
Becker notes that we saw the highest ever midterm election turnout in 2018 at 50%. He’s cautiously optimistic we will break that record this cycle, but says if we get to 53%, it would be a “tsunami.”
Now to the bad news. We cover a lot of the major concerns right now, including the fears about ICE at the polls, DOJ voter-data pushes, voting machine worries, and the very real efforts to lay the groundwork to challenge the results of the election. We also talk about why Becker feels confident we will see the results certified.
“I know some people are really worried when they see the federal government mobilize to interfere with our election in a way that we’ve never seen before in American history. And that’s awful,” Becker said. “We should not normalize that. It’s really bad, and it’s taken a lot of work. But on the other hand, it’s really desperate, isn’t it? It’s really kind of pathetic in a way. They’re failing at everything.”
If you haven’t voted yet, make sure you have a plan! If you still have a mail-in ballot to return, it’s probably best to deliver it yourself. Eight days to go!
