In the 2010 midterm elections, the overall turnout of eligible voters was forty-one percent. Do you want to know which states had 50% turnout or better? Here they are, with their rules for early voting:
Minnesota: 55.4% – Yes, but you’ll need to provide a valid excuse.
Maine: 55.3% – You may vote early in person, no excuse required.
Washington: 53.2% – Yes, but voting is done by mail.
South Dakota: 52.8% – You may vote early in person using an absentee ballot, no excuse required.
Oregon: 52.7% – Voting is done by mail.
Wisconsin: 52.1% – You may vote early in person using an absentee ballot, no excuse required.
Alaska: 52.0% You may vote early in person using an absentee ballot, no excuse required.
Colorado: 50.7% – You may vote early in person, no excuse required.
Iowa: 50.0% – You may vote early in person, no excuse required.
Minnesota is the only state on the list that has any restrictions at all on early voting. Early voting boosts turnout. And that’s the real reason that conservatives don’t like it. They make up all kinds of reasons to not like early voting, some of which have some validity to them, but they give away the game when they also call same-day voter registration “a crackpot idea.” They dislike same-day registration because it boosts turnout. They love photo ID requirements because it depresses turnout, and does so disproportionately to the other side.
The Republicans want to minimize the number of moochers who will appear at the polls refusing to take any personal responsibility for their lives and voting for government handouts. That’s how they roll.
The way the Democrats roll is that we try to get all our committed voters to the polls early so nothing happens like an illness or car trouble on Election Day that costs us their votes. Then we can cull our walking and call lists down to the people we know have not yet voted and can be much more efficient in our ground game. So, if you live in a state that allows early voting, please take advantage of it. It will make the organizers’ jobs easier and it will free you up on Election Day to be an organizer, too.
This is how the Obama campaign can win the election and help elect a Democratic House while strengthening our numbers in the Senate. Anything less will be unacceptable.
“The way the Democrats roll is that we try to get all our committed voters to the polls early so nothing happens like an illness or car trouble on Election Day that costs us their votes.”
I’m really hoping the college kids vote early, or at least if they don’t there are adaquate machines to actually allow them to cast their votes in a reasonable time. There is no excuse for anyone to have to stand in lines for hours to vote.
As always, I’m very concerned about vote counting. The teavangelicals and their ultra-aristocratic leaders are the least trustworthy people on the planet.
I’ve signed up to take the poll-monitor training Obama’s team offers and to watch the polls. I’m not a lawyer but told them my legal experience and they said close enough.
Oh, and Colorado offers early voting in person and by mail – for mail most of us drop it off at the DMV just to be safe. Ironically the polls had long lines 4 years ago during the 3 days of early voting in the reichwing areas of Colorado Springs but no lines on voting day itself.
And often.
That way the poll workers know you and you don’t have to show your ID.
I still would like to see the Democrats play more offense on this issue. Make everyone automatically eligible to vote or required, entice them with a tax break. GOP loves tax breaks!
I think it would be better for our democracy as a whole if everyone voted.
This is one of the Democratic party’s weak points – not coming up with proposals that address what the GOP pretends to be complaining about while actually helping the Democrats.
In this case the Democrats should propose a policy of free photo ID for everyone and a big program rollout in every state through block grants – but the states get the grants only after the required numbers are met. Every photo ID also has the SSN on the ID and a citizenship notation. AND, since the photo ID is state issued it also is an automatic vote registration.
Then a legal requirement that all voting software has to log the vote in real time to a central database that includes the SSN as index – ostensibly to make sure no one votes twice. HOWEVER, the connection must meet certain security requirements that no current voting software meets, including keeping the vote secret, AND logs the votes as they happen at the central database so they don’t get accidentally “lost”.
But in order to be sure that this is done in an orderly fashion so as not to crash the central server the votes are done over a period of a month before the election.
Now, this proposal fully addresses the hue and cry over so-called voter fraud that the GOP raises. But it also destroys their current vote stoppage techniques.
Unfortunately, while the billionaire’s club has been funding the huge wingnut welfare industry for decades we don’t have the same on the left, so these kind of ideas don’t go anywhere.
Here’s an interesting thought I saw on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html
Combine this with your answer to the registration problem and I think we may have something.
Personally-identifiable voting is hardly “secret ballot”.
The anonymity of voters is part of the protections against election fraud. And bribery. And intimidation.
With certain types of encryption schemes you can link the encrypted vote information to the voter without revealing who voted for whom.
The idea is that the voter information is stored (who voted, when, where) in the open in the database and the encrypted vote information is attached. If votes have to be audited, such as due to finding one or more voters were not valid, the software can extract the votes from the encrypted packages in a way that does not reveal who voted for whom.
Software security solutions are fine as long as they are subject to public review for weaknesses. The problems we have today is that the software is considered private property by GOP-leaning courts so there is no independent verification that they actually count properly.
In 2008 I voted early in Massachusetts; simply went to town hall, explained I’d be busy doing campaign work on Election Day and asked for an absentee ballot; got it, filled it out, and was done in a few minutes.
Don’t know if it’d be that easy everywhere in my state, but there it is.
In Illinois, absentee ballots are allowed for election judges not serving in their own districts. Early voting exists but by machine only. I could go to Village Hall, show my voting card and vote on the traceless Sequoia machine right there. Or I could give one of the standard absentee excuses and get a ballot to hand back or mail. The absentee ballot can be overridden on election day but the early ballot has no do over.
On Election Day, the absentee ballot envelopes are delivered to your precinct. The Election Judges look over the rolls and if you voted in person, your absentee ballot is marked “Voted in person” and initialed by all the judges. It is then stuck into a (to be) sealed envelope with all judges signing across the seal. The rest of the absentee ballots envelopes are opened without looking at the ballot which is placed in the ballot box. The ballot box is then opened and the ballots placed into a machine that reads them. The empty envelopes are saved and placed into another sealed envelope for the record.
Polls are open and Election Judges must be present 6:00AM to 7:00PM and if anyone is in line at 7:00PM they must be allowed to vote even if it takes to Midnight or beyond. Judges show up an hour early to set up, at least most do. All are supposed to but someone always sluffs off the work. After the polls have closed and all voters in line have voted, there is a lot of paperwork things to do like the aforementioned absentee ballot handling. And the voting paraphernalia has to be stowed away again. Two Judges, one from each Party deliver the ballots and envelopes in a sealed container. At this stage the system breaks down. As one Republican judge told me, “My wife pretends to be a Democrat so we can both get the extra pay.” I insisted on going along anyway without pay, but they wouldn’t let me ride in their car. I followed closely trying to look for anything suspicious. I’m sure the same thing happens in the City. Reps from both parties should go around together in a County vehicle collecting the ballots from the sealed containers instead of the present system which would work OK if public transportation was used.
All told Election Judges work about 16 hours, sometimes without eating. In the 1992 Presidential my wife went without eating because of the lines. At my precinct, the Republican Committeeman delivered two pizzas saying this pizza was for republican judges only. After he left, the republican judges invited us to share. I worked straight through also, but I ate pizza with one hand while handing out ballot applications with the other. Messy but effective. Moron voters made comments like, “How come we can’t have pizza too.
I think IL changed in 2008 for absentee voting. Anyone can do it, you don’t have to have a reason. As a matter of fact I remember a “Vote Naked” campaign in 2008.
Could be, Jim. I haven’t voted absentee since I quit being a judge. My little narrative shows why early votes don’t get a do over on Election Day (because the voted irrevocably on the machine). Most voters like the machines and young voters absolutely will not use the paper ballots. Only old fogies like me insist on the paper. I like to think some PROM isn’t delivering my vote for Bush regardless of what I think I’m voting for. Many voters are lulled by the display of their votes, but 25 years in the embedded software business has taught me that what goes over the wireless transmitter need not have any relationship to what the rest of the software displays. Hanging chads or not, a punch card or paper ballot can be recounted and challenged.
http://www.elections.state.il.us/votinginformation/absenteevoting.aspx
It seems you are right and absentees don’t get a do over anymore either. So the only difference between absentee and early voting is voting in-person on the spot by machine or mailing in a paper ballot. Might as well call it vote by mail instead of absentee.
IL always does things a strange way.
I mailed my absentee ballot this morning
nice.
Hope it didn’t get ripped up in a Delivery Barcode Sorter (DBCS). Actually, rarely do more than half a dozen letters out of 100,000 get damaged. I’m paranoid because I see the ripped up letters every day. Part of my job is to pull them out and figure out what went wrong and fix it.
I voted early today in Illinois. I wasn’t able to vote at all the year Obama won the primary for IL senate – we had a big emergency at my work and I couldn’t get away. Now I always, always vote early. You just never know what will happen.
I hate the machines but, as bad as they are, I think they are still better than an absentee paper ballot that someone can conveniently “lose” or that won’t get counted until later, or maybe never.
Didn’t have to give a reason for EARLY voting. But you do have to show an ID if you are voting early at a location that is not your own precinct.