Dina Mahmoud (Washington, London)
Early voting began yesterday in the US presidential election in the states of Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota, where voters can cast their ballots in person at polling stations, or by voting by mail.
While Minnesota and South Dakota offer both mail-in and in-person early voting options, Virginia only allows in-person early voting by visiting a polling place.
Early voting is one of a number of electoral options offered by states to facilitate the voting process before the US presidential election on November 5.
Early voting became increasingly popular during the 2020 election, when more than 100 million voters cast ballots by mail or in person before Election Day to avoid crowds at polling stations amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Many states continued to offer these electoral options in subsequent elections.
Former US Ambassador to Canada Bruce Alan Hyman called for not underestimating the votes of his fellow citizens residing outside the United States in terms of tipping the scales in favor of any of the competitors in the presidential elections, in light of the intense race between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
Alan Hyman, who represented his country in Ottawa between 2014 and 2017, stressed that the number of American voters abroad, which amounts to about 6.5 million Americans, is sufficient, despite its relative smallness, to make the difference in a close marathon, such as the one currently ongoing between the Democratic vice president and his Republican predecessor.
In this regard, the American diplomat pointed to precedents witnessed by the United States during the last two presidential elections, held in 2016 and 2020, which revealed that the election results may be decided by small differences, which gives exceptional importance to the voting trends of voters abroad.
According to Alan Hyman, current President Joe Biden won the Electoral College in the last presidential election, by only tens of thousands of votes over his rival Trump, in a reverse repetition of the scenario in which the Republican billionaire himself reached the White House, at the expense of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton four years earlier, thanks to his winning of the votes of a handful of swing states, estimated at the time to be 77,000 votes.
The former US ambassador to Canada, in statements published by the MSNBC news network, considered that voters abroad could make up that difference if they cast their votes, saying that urging these voters to head to the ballot boxes in the upcoming November 5 elections seems more important than urging them to do so in previous elections.
According to Alan Hyman, the former US ambassador to Canada, the two sides in the White House race this time appear to be “locked in a very close race,” which is why the Democratic Party recently allocated a budget of about $300,000 to help Americans living abroad register to vote before Election Day.
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