Count Barack Obama as among the 18 million Americans (and counting) who have voted early in the 2024 presidential election. The former president drew cheers Tuesday from supporters at a rally for Kamala Harris in Madison, Wisconsin, when he declared: “I voted yesterday.” Urging his audience to do the same, Obama said he filled out his mail-in ballot in his hometown of Chicago. “Then I walked, which I don’t always get a chance to do, and Secret Service got nervous, but I said, ‘Nah, let’s walk to a mailbox.’” Amid the 2020 pandemic, significantly more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail, though the system has not traditionally benefited one party over the other. Obama joked on Tuesday that Gen Z might need some help getting familiar with the voting method he used. “My younger staff was like, ‘What’s that blue thing?’” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s a mailbox.’”
