Democrats Start Pushing In-Person Voting

Democrats, after months of promoting mail-in voting, recently began pushing their supporters to vote in person, a notable change in messaging, according to CNN.

"We've got to vote early, in person if we can," former first lady Michelle Obama said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, adding that voters should “grab our comfortable shoes” and “put on our masks” to stay safe and comfortable at the polls.

Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, both voted in person the day before the Delaware primary, even though the state allows all registered voters to mail in a ballot.

Many Democrats, including ones formerly pushing for mail-in voting, now cite the changes to the U.S. Postal Service and President Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, raising concerns of delays and inaccurate counts as reasons for the change.

"Maybe 98% of the Black people I'm talking to are not trusting mail-in voting," LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told CNN. "I think there is a major consideration around voting in person."

She added, "We also share some of the concerns around mail-in voting, but we want to keep that an option. The sweet spot for us is to vote early."

A Democrat operative in Pennsylvania added that Trump "has succeeded in making people scared and distrustful of the post office. There were large swaths of voters who already weren't sure about the post office, so people need to understand they have other options."

Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University, added that the president has "politicized the issue dramatically and you began to see this much starker divide between Republicans and Democrats and how they planned to vote. That made even more dramatic the possibility of how lots of late counted ballots could play into a dangerous situation with outcomes switching in key states after election night."

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