Title: Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight | Crosscut
Headings: Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight
Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight
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Content: But the move to voting at home still seems to have improved that participation, especially among younger voters. Still, there’s both good and bad news in the data, depending on your perspective. Vote by mail seems to be attracting younger voters. In the 2018 midterm election, 50.6% of registered voters age 18 to 24 cast their ballots, compared with 41.3% of the youngest voters who participated in the 2010 midterm election during President Barack Obama’s first term. The latter involved ballots cast both in-person or by mail before vote-by-mail took effect in Washington. The same youth bump was seen in the 2016 general election, when President Donald Trump was elected, with 59% of registered 18- to 24-year-olds voting, compared with 56.4% who voted in 2008, when Obama was first elected. Turnout among older voters, however, has decreased under vote-by-mail, with lower turnout in 2016 and 2018 than 2008 and 2010 among voters 45 and older. Washington could not provide turnout data by racial and ethnic group, but another state that votes by mail did have that information available. A 2017 study of Colorado voting, done by Pantheon Analytics for The Washington Monthly, also found that younger voters increased their participation while the oldest voters decreased. The study also looked at race as a factor, even though it’s difficult to track, and found that turnout among Asian, Black and Hispanic voters all increased in the election they studied, but not by a large factor.