The Covid-19 pandemic may have had a durable impact on the way Americans vote, with voting by mail remaining more popular in 2022 than it was pre-pandemic, according to new data released by the United States Election Assistance Commission.
The Election Administration and Voting Survey report, which compiles data from state and local election officials after each federal election, also found Election Day in-person voting rebounded from the pandemic lows of 2020.
Last year, almost a third of votes were cast by mail, compared to about a quarter of votes in 2018.
Meanwhile, nearly half of voters cast their ballots in-person on Election Day 2022, making it the most common way for voters to participate in the 2022 midterms. That was the case in 2018 as well, when a majority of voters cast their ballots on Election Day. In 2020, amid the pandemic, voting by mail was the most popular way to cast a ballot.
The report also found that the share of ballots cast early in-person returned to 2018 levels after spiking in 2020.
At the EAC's 2023 Data Summit on Wednesday, Lindsay Nielson, a senior researcher for the company that conducted the report, explained that it is likely that higher rates of mail-in voting will persist in the future.
"The 2022 level of mail voting is not quite as high as in 2020, but it's still higher than pre-pandemic levels. I think that's an indication that some elevated level of mail voting is here to stay," Nielson said. "There is a large body of academic research that suggests that voting itself is habit-forming. If you vote once, you are quite likely to vote again in future elections."
Nielson added that she thinks it's "highly likely that voter mode is a habit-forming choice as well."
In 2020, many states changed their voting rules to make it easier to vote by mail or before Election Day, but not all those changes continued in 2022. Meanwhile, some Republicans have spent the last several years criticizing mail-in voting and telling their voters to head to the polls on Election Day.
One change that did not outlast the pandemic was a shift in the age of poll workers. The age distribution of poll workers increased in 2022, with most poll workers being 61 years old or older, returning to pre-pandemic levels. During the 2020 election, poll workers skewed younger, with most younger than 61.
