In early primaries, voters favor polling places over mail

By Associated Press Posted on May 15, 2022

Ursula Gruenewald, a resident of Acworth, Ga., cast her ballot at an early voting site on Friday, May 6, 2022. Gruenewald, who usually votes by mail, said she had a difficult time navigating recent changes to the mail voting process in Georgia and decided to vote at the early voting site to avoid the possibility of long lines on Election Day.(AP Photo/Christina A. Cassidy)

By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY Associated Press

ATLANTA — The great vote-by-mail wave appears to be receding just as quickly as it arrived.

After tens of millions of people in the United States opted for mail ballots during the pandemic election of 2020, voters in early primary states are returning in droves to in-person voting this year.

In Georgia, one of the mostly hotly contested states, about 85,000 voters had requested mail ballots for the May 24 primary, as of Thursday. That is a dramatic decrease from the nearly 1 million who cast mail ballots in the state’s 2020 primary at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.