--- title: Early Voting 2016: Why States Began Offering the Option description: A brief history of early voting shows that what started as a convenience for some has become a major factor in U.S. elections canonical: https://time.com/4539862/early-voting-history-first-states/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-25T13:04:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T17:18:19.000Z article:section: History og:title: Early Voting 2016: Why States Began Offering the Option og:description: Some people who couldn't vote on Election Day were lying in order to get absentee ballots og:url: https://time.com/4539862/early-voting-history-first-states/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4abddfe0bc91210e/6988acabab6d775d956abcc8/early-voting.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4494 og:image:height: 2528 og:image:alt: Campaign 2016 Early Voting Maryland og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Early Voting 2016: Why States Began Offering the Option twitter:description: Some people who couldn't vote on Election Day were lying in order to get absentee ballots twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4abddfe0bc91210e/6988acabab6d775d956abcc8/early-voting.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is How Early Voting Became a Thing > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Dec 13, 2023 5:18 PM UTCPublished: Oct 25, 2016 1:04 PM UTC  A volunteer prepares to hand out stickers to voters at an early polling station in Towson, Md., on Nov. 1, 2016. A volunteer prepares to hand out stickers to voters at an early polling station in Towson, Md., on Nov. 1, 2016.Patrick Semansky—AP  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Dec 13, 2023 5:18 PM UTCPublished: Oct 25, 2016 1:04 PM UTC As of Nov. 6, more than 101 million Americans are known to have voted ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3 — a total equal to about 73% of all votes counted in the 2016 election, according to the [United States Election Project](https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html), which tracks early voting data. But how did early voting become a thing? The precursor to the idea was absentee voting, which essentially allows people to vote early and from afar if they aren’t going to be available on Election Day. NCSL’s Wendy Underhill says the earliest evidence the organization could find was “a list of eligible persons \[who\] were permitted to vote before Election Day” when Louisiana established “in-person absentee voting” in 1921. But the reason behind that particular change is unclear, and the origins of the idea of absentee voting go even further back. “Excuse-required absentee voting started during the Civil War —a product of the competition between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan,” says Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College and founder and director of the non-partisan [Early Voting Information Center](http://earlyvoting.net/). “Lincoln wanted to assure that he got the votes of the soldiers who were serving away from home.” [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) The earliest example of early non-absentee voting that Gronke can recall dates back to the late 1970s. California adopted a type of early voting called “no-excuse absentee balloting” — in which voters don’t have to have an excuse to apply for an absentee ballot — because the state was dealing with “an increasing number of people who were simply lying, saying ‘I couldn’t make it to the polling place’ when what was apparent is that they had really long commutes or it was otherwise really inconvenient to make it.” By the late 1980s, Texas had become the first state to offer early in-person voting, for similar convenience reasons. In 1995, Oregon became the first state to conduct a federal primary election entirely by mail, prompted by the resignation of U.S. Senator Bob Packwood (after the Senate Ethics Committee found him [guilty](https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal95-1099527) on charges of sexual harassment). Democrat Ron Wyden was elected in January of 1996 in what was the first mail-only general election to fill a federal seat, and he has held office since. In 2000, Oregon became the first all vote-by-mail state after a citizens initiative garnered [70% approval](http://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Pages/votebymail.aspx) in 1998\. Washington did the same in 2011 and Colorado did in 2013. After the Florida recount and “hanging chad” debacle of the 2000 presidential election, a wave of states started adopting early voting because they were worried election officials were too rushed on Election Day and that, as Gronke puts it, “reducing the pressures on election officials on Election Day would reduce the likelihood of long lines or polling place problems.” In 2016, two in five ballots cast for the general election were early, absentee or by-mail, [according to](https://www.eac.gov/documents/2017/10/17/eavs-deep-dive-early-absentee-and-mail-voting-data-statutory-overview) a federal survey of state data on the administration of federal elections. In 2020, [43 U.S. states](https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/early-voting-in-state-elections.aspx) (and D.C.) will allow some form of early voting before Election Day on Nov. 3. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4539862/early-voting-history-first-states/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4539862/early-voting-history-first-states/"},"headline":"This Is How Early Voting Became a Thing","datePublished":"2016-10-25T13:04:43.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T17:18:19.000Z","description":"Some people who couldn't vote on Election Day were lying in order to get absentee ballots","url":"https://time.com/4539862/early-voting-history-first-states/","keywords":["politics"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4abddfe0bc91210e/6988acabab6d775d956abcc8/early-voting.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. 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