Miles Rapoport at TAP:

But one thing we can say with some confidence is that there will be a record turnout in this election. As of this Friday evening, over 86,300,000 people have already voted.  This is measured against 137 million people who voted in 2016, and a Total Voting Eligible Population of 239 million people, according to Professor Michael McDonald and the U.S. Elections Project. While it is too early to say that this extraordinary early vote are new voters and not just the same voters voting earlier, it seems clear that turnout this year will almost certainly be over 150 million votes cast; it could well go over 160 million.

There are lots of reasons for this, but I want to highlight one that is not properly credited. So many people are voting early because people have successfully fought to open the process of registration and voting over the last twenty years, building off the trailblazing work of the civil rights movement. Major expansions of opportunities for people to register and vote were increasingly the norm before any of the adjustments because of COVID-19.