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Advanced Counts: Absentees

How to filter your voter list for absentee/early vote ballots in upcoming and previous elections

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Written by FLS Help
Updated over 2 months ago

Counts for Absentee ballot requests, returned ballots and early votes can be pulled from Tools > Advanced Counts in the Voter Frequency section. Select and drag Absentee into an empty Group box and choose the election in the drop-down menu.

Results can be filtered by five ballot status types and a date range:

  • Ballot Request: the date a voter requested an absentee ballot for the election

  • Ballot Return: the date a voter returned a completed absentee ballot

  • Early Vote: the date a voter cast an early vote ballot

  • Poll Vote: the date a voter cast a poll vote on election day

  • Ballot Sent: the date a ballot is mailed to a voter (added October 2022)

  • Date Range: enter the starting and ending dates for the selected ballot types

Be sure to select at least one ballot type to get results for a date range. Absentee records are uploaded into the database by a site administrator. Please contact your data director for more information about adding new absentee data.

Absentee/Early Vote records are automatically updated daily for all participating states until all ballots are received for an election. Go to Tools > Absentee Ballot Report to view statistics for upcoming and previous elections since 2022.
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Absentee Primary and Absentee General Status

Values for Absentee General and Absentee Primary were reset to use only 2022 absentee/early vote data, and the values have been updated for new elections accordingly. Absentee Primary includes voters who requested or returned an absentee ballot, cast an early vote or were identified as a poll voter for the 2022 Congressional Primary elections or later. Absentee General includes voters who have requested or returned an absentee ballot, cast an early vote, or identified as a poll voter for the 2022 General election or later.

Filtering non-absentee voters

Use the Not Equals connector to pull voters who have not yet requested, returned, nor cast an absentee ballot or early vote for the upcoming election.

Absentee Ballot Status

Absentee Ballot Status values apply to voters with a "Permanent", "Temporary" or "Military" status. These values may no longer be provided in the state voter data, especially in states which regularly use Vote By Mail or early voting as primary vote methods. "Permanent" Absentee Ballot Status values may be applied to states maintaining "Permanent Absentee Voter List" (PAVL) and "Permanent Early Voter List" (PEVL) records.

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