Google and Wiki have failed me.
When I first began voting in Ohio in the mid-Eighties, you had to be in the hospital, in the military, out of the county or in jail in order to request an absentee ballot. Now you can get one for any reason or none at all.
Were absentee ballots available in the earliest days of the republic, or did they come along later? Which state offered them first?
I voted in my first election in 1972, while I was at college. The school actually helped students get absentee ballots from their home towns, or to change legal addresses if they wanted to vote in the school’s city.
This was such a large and well-organized effort that I’m guessing they had been doing it for years.
See here for a good thumbnail history of absentee voting. I had always heard that the soldier vote during the Civil War represented the first absentee voting of any kind, but the article says that Pennsylvania had made a similar effort during the War of 1812.
Note that Civil War soldiers did not vote via “absentee ballot” as we now know it; there were no state-printed ballots. Soldiers voted by party ticket, and election officers had to find the state regiments and collect the tickets. See here for some anecdotes.
Absentee voting for civilians dates to the second and third decades of the Twentieth Century, after the Australian ballot had become universal. I don’t know the exact reasons why it caught on at that particular time; it may have been a reaction to displaced individuals in World War I industries or perhaps just general reaction to greater mobility via the automobile.
Very good - thanks!
Unless they changed this no. I voted absentee from Ohio when I was in college in th fall of 1970. I had turned 21 that year which was the voting age then.