Hey there, it's Tam and I am here because our friends over at LifeKit put together a really great podcast about how to vote by mail.

We thought that you would both enjoy it and find it useful. So we're putting it here for you too. Here's NPR's LifeKit.

This is NPR's LifeKit. I'm Wanda Summers from the NPR Politics team.

The coronavirus has drastically changed all aspects of American life. It turned our economy and education systems upside down.

And in November, it'll change our democracy. Voting is going to look different this year than it ever has before.

Four years ago, more voters chose to vote by mail than in any presidential election ever before, with about a quarter of voters choosing to vote that way.

This year, experts are expecting that number to at least double, with as many as 60 or 70% of all ballots being vote by mail or absentee ballots.

That means there's a gap here. There are a lot of voters who have never voted by mail before, but who are going to want to this year for health reasons.

And there will also be a lot of new voters who are participating in this process for the first time.

We want to help. So this episode of LifeKit, how to vote by mail.

Joining us now is NPR's Voting Reporter, Miles Parks. Hey Miles.

Hi, Wana. So I want to start really broad. How is this election going to look different than a normal election? Let's think, for example, maybe the 2018 midterms.

Not to be overly dramatic, but this election is going to be different than just about any election we've ever had in American history.

I mean, states are going to have to change everything about how we vote to accommodate the coronavirus.

Even when you just think about in-person polling places, you think about the masks that precinct officers are going to have to wear and the separation that they're going to need to be putting in for people who are waiting in line.

All of that is going to contribute to a different look for voting in November. But the biggest difference honestly is with mail voting.

There are states where less than 10% of the voters voted by mail in just the 2018 midterms and those states are going to ramp it up this quickly to have maybe half of their voters voting by mail this election.

Those are the sorts of shifts and increases in the mail voting that we saw in the primaries that experts are expecting to have happen again in November.

Miles, I reported on a poll a couple of weeks ago and it found that more than half of people under the age of 35 say they don't have the knowledge or the resources to know how to vote by mail. How hard is this?

Yeah, so here's where I make the most important caveat of all. Voting is local. It's different everywhere, every county and state. So how hard it is to vote by mail is also going to be different everywhere.

But overall, it's going to be easier than ever before states are relaxing restrictions on who's eligible to do it. They're spending money on sending ballot request forms to all voters in some states.

And in others, California specifically, which is the state with the most voters in the country, they're going to be sending a ballot out to all registered voters. Still, there's no question voting by mail is going to be new to a lot of voters.

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