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Fifth of presidential ballots cast before election { October 29 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/campaign/29early.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/campaign/29early.html
October 29, 2004
BALLOTING
Sharp Increase in Early Voting Alters Campaign
By RICK LYMAN and WILLIAM YARDLEY
MADISON, Wis., Oct. 28 - State election officials around the country said on Thursday that there had been a surge in early voting this year, with people lining up in numbers so large that some analysts predict that one-fifth of presidential ballots will be cast before Nov. 2.
The Kerry and Bush campaigns disagree about which side this early voting will help the most. But already, this trend is sharply altering the homestretch calculus of campaign strategists, affecting where candidates are sent and money is spent in the final days. And it has turned the get-out-the-vote drives that are usually reserved for the final hours of the campaign into a half-month marathon.
Here in Madison on Thursday, more than 80,000 people jammed onto a sloping boulevard leading up to the State Capitol to hear Senator John Kerry and Bruce Springsteen urge them to vote Democratic and, if possible, to do so early. Fresh from the rally, thousands in the crowd were directed to walk six blocks to the city-county building to cast their votes, marching behind Kerry volunteers toting "Follow Me" banners.
Early voting is taking place across Florida for the first time in a presidential election, and some people have waited hours at the limited polling sites out of concern that this Election Day will prove as chaotic as the one there four years ago.
Alicia Balseiro, 70, an ardent Bush supporter in Miami, said on Thursday that she had come out to vote early for a key reason. "I don't know if I'll die tomorrow," she said.
On Thursday afternoon, Jose Morales, 62, and his wife, Susana, waited two hours to vote for Mr. Bush in suburban Miami-Dade County.
A sense of urgency brought him out to vote early in his heavily Republican precinct, he said. "Kerry's too close," Mr. Morales said, referring to the tightness of the race. "They need my vote for the Republican Party."
Never before have so many voters gone to the polls so early. In 2000, 13 states offered early balloting. This year, it is 23. In addition, laws governing absentee voting have become less stringent in many states, letting people obtain absentee ballots almost unconditionally and often, as in Wisconsin, to cast them on the spot. This amounts to a form of early voting and raises the total to 31 states.
In some heavily populated areas, early voting is increasing as the election approaches. In Florida's largely Democratic Miami-Dade County, about 14 percent of registered voters - 149,476 people - had already cast ballots, election officials said. In Broward County, also heavily Democratic, about 9 percent had voted.
"I think part of it is that's just sort of the direction everything is moving in our lives," said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the Miami-Dade elections department. "We want to do things when it's most convenient to us. I voted early because I'm going to be pretty busy on Election Day."
Both parties insist that this voting trend, which is occurring in states leaning Republican and Democrat alike, favors their candidate and that they have poised themselves to take advantage of it. A final reckoning will not be known until the votes are counted, but it is already clear that the campaigns have shifted to adapt to this new reality.
Republicans have previously proved more adept at using absentee balloting and early voting. In New Mexico, for instance, where more than half the votes are cast early in many races, it is not uncommon for election outcomes there to be reversed in the Republicans' favor by the counting of those early ballots.
Democrats said that this year they were more aggressive in encouraging early voting, a priority that they say is largely responsible for the surge now being seen.
"What we're doing is focusing our efforts on new voters who have just registered," said Richard Judge, state director of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "The thinking is that they're less likely to turn out on Election Day because they are by definition less politically inclined than people who have been registered all along."
It is no coincidence, party strategists say, that both campaigns have focused much recent effort on the battleground states that offer early voting, like Wisconsin, Florida and New Mexico.
Another reason political campaigns have embraced early voting is that it gives them more time to tend to supporters who are least likely to get to the polls. It also frees campaign volunteers to work a full day on Election Day without having to break away to vote themselves.
Election officials around the country say there is no firm data about early voters, but they seem to fall into one of two categories.
The first is those who were urged to do so, either by their party or their peers; they tend to break down into the demographic groups most likely to support one or the other party.
But the second group, which some election officials said appeared to outnumber the first, is a cross-section of all voters: people who seem to have gone to the polls without urging and are simply eager to make their mark as soon as possible.
Thursday's rally in Madison, at which supporters were urged to walk across town and vote immediately, followed a similar event last month when Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, appeared on the University of Wisconsin campus and exhorted the audience to follow him onto three buses that would take them to vote.
In Florida, such events have become a staple of the final month of campaigning.
"It's certainly altered our campaigning," said Matthew Miller, Florida spokesman for the Kerry campaign, citing special "early voting rallies" both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards have held. The rallies often end with offers of a free bus ride to the polling site.
William R. Scherer, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer working for the Republicans, said his party had no need for such stunts. "We don't need to bus," he said. "Most of our people have cars."
Democrats said they were buoyed by early indications in Nevada, a state that polls had shown leaning toward President Bush. The Nevada secretary of state, Dean Heller, said that by Monday more than 168,000 early and absentee votes had been cast in the state's five largest counties, which account for 91 percent of Nevada's population.
No exact figures are available yet for Wisconsin, said Kevin J. Kennedy, the executive director of the state's election board. But he expected early voting to rise to 10 percent of the ballots cast this year from 6 percent in 2000, and perhaps even double.
Whether because the political passions of voters are unusually high this year, because they are eager to avoid Election Day snarls or simply because they are eager to get this long election over with, the trend holds virtually everywhere early voting is possible.
In several counties in Georgia, early voters have stood in line for three hours or more to cast their ballots. At one polling site in College Park on Thursday, people waited more than four hours.
In Maine, election clerks in several towns are predicting double or even triple the number of early voters this year. In Portland, for instance, officials said that based on the volume of requests for absentee ballots they expect as many as 8,000 to be cast; the highest previous total was 2,300.
By Monday, more than 350,000 voters had cast their ballots in North Carolina, nearly 6.5 percent of the state's registered voters, matching the total of early voters for the entire 2000 election.
In Oregon, which conducts all of its voting by mail, 38 percent of registered voters had already sent in their ballots by Tuesday, up from 26 percent at the same point four years ago. In Louisiana, more than 100,000 early votes had been cast by Tuesday, compared with 76,765 in the entire 2000 election. In New Mexico, a third of Santa Fe's registered voters had already voted by Tuesday, despite average waits of a half-hour in line.
The early vote has not gone smoothly everywhere. In Florida, Republicans have said their voters were harassed at polling sites in Democratic precincts in Broward County.
Matthew Miller, Florida spokesman for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, called the charges "ridiculous" and said Republicans were simply complaining now "so when they offer challenges on Election Day they've set the groundwork."
State elections officials said there have been a handful of incidents when police officers responded to polling sites after supervisors complained of unruly behavior. But most complaints have been about the time spent waiting. Most counties have only a dozen polling places for early voting, while hundreds will be open Tuesday.
"Obviously the legislature, as well as the supervisors of elections, did not anticipate the numbers they are seeing," said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the state division of elections in Tallahassee.
Rick Lyman reported from Madison for this article, and William Yardley from Miami.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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