FROM NOW ON, ELECTION DAY WILL LAST TWO WEEKS
St. Petersburg Times -- September 12, 2004
by Adam C. Smith
The calendar pegs Election Day as Nov. 2, but that's not how a lot of
Florida politicos see it.
"Election Day starts Oct. 18," said U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami,
chairman of John Kerry's Florida campaign. "I think you're going to see
30 to 35 percent of the vote will already have been cast by Nov. 2."
Welcome to the brave new world of American democracy, where the
traditional communal rite of Election Day is giving way to convenience
and starting to dramatically change the nature of campaigning.
Florida this year holds its first presidential election in which both
parties are not only aggressively pushing for early "absentee" voting by
mail but also trying to tug voters to the polls as much as two weeks
before Election Day. With the prospect of another dead heat Florida
election, Democrats and Republicans alike are intent on banking as many
votes as early as they can.
"In the past, at the end of a campaign you'd sit there and say, "Gee, I
wonder what we could have done differently if we only had three more
hours.' Now we've got two weeks," said Brett Doster, who manages the
Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida and expects to tap thousands of
volunteers to promote early voting by supporters.
Absentee voting has long been a staple for Republican campaigns in
Florida, providing a huge advantage over Democrats. It will be a vital
part of the Bush-Cheney campaign again this year, with some 2.5-million
Republican and independent voters recently receiving mailers urging them
to order absentee ballots to vote for Bush.
After the 2000 election, state lawmakers adopted a "no excuses" policy
that lets people vote by mail even if they can get to the polls. In
addition, voters in all 67 counties will now be allowed to cast their
ballots up to two weeks before Election Day, a dramatic shift from the
fledgling and inconsistently administered system of four years ago.
It means the Florida presidential race that had already become intense
earlier than ever before, is heading to a frenzied crescendo weeks
before Election Day. Between the two campaigns that already have nearly
200 paid staffers in the state, thousands of volunteers coming soon, and
an assortment of independently operating Democratic groups, Florida will
see armies of people trying to get targeted voters to the polls early.
"This election in Florida will be one for the history books," predicted
Meek. "It's going to be hand-to-hand combat for votes neighborhood by
neighborhood. There will be very few people who have not had it
explained to them how they can vote this year."
Both sides for months have used phone banks and door-to-door canvassing
to pinpoint their voters, and in many cases will provide transportation
for early voting. Rallies will be held to culminate with marches to
early voting sites.
This is new territory for campaigns and elections officials, but
everyone expects the early voting trend to grow this year and beyond.
Where roughly 11 percent of voters cast early absentee ballots in 2000,
estimates for this year generally range from 20 percent to 35 percent of
voters voting early.
Those early votes won't be counted until Nov. 2, but some Democrats see
the new early voting rules giving an edge to their party, which usually
has lower turnout rates than Republicans.
"Early voting is huge to us if we can take advantage of it," said Monica
Russo, head of the Service Employees International Union, which has 350
people mobilizing mostly lower income voters across the state.
She argues that Democrats have a larger pool of unreliable voters to tap
than Republicans, and early voting - by absentee ballot and in person -
provides much more opportunity to drive up Democratic turnout than a
single day for voting.
"We're really talking about marginal voters, who if their car breaks
down it's not like they can grab a cab because they don't necessarily
have the money," said Russo.
But the Bush-Cheney campaign plans an aggressive early voting push too,
with county-by-county targets for early voting totals. They're also
again pushing hard for absentee voting, which in 2000 produced some
700,000 votes widely believed to have strongly favored Bush. In the
bellwether county of Pinellas, for instance, Republicans cast 27,323
absentee votes, compared with 13,790 by Democrats.
The Republican absentee effort costs hundreds of thousands of dollars
for mass mailings and follow up phone calls.
State Democratic Chairman Scott Maddox acknowledged the party will be
financially hard-pressed to strongly compete on absentee ballots, but
will push to minimize that advantage through early voting. Both forms of
early voting are also a major part of the Kerry strategy in Florida,
said spokesman Matt Miller, adding that the campaign hopes to narrow the
GOP absentee voting advantage while beating them with in-person early
voting.
They will have help on both fronts by some well-funded Democratic groups
legally barred from coordinating with Kerry-Edwards. Karin Johanson,
Florida Director for a group called America Coming Together that is
spending millions in Florida, expects to promote aggressively both
absentee and early voting.
"Absentee voting may be a little bit more significant," said Johanson,
who like many other strategists remains uncertain about the impact of
early voting. "I'd like to think early voting is going to be huge, but I
just don't know. There's not enough experience with it to measure it."
While campaigns have long monitored absentee ballot requests in the
weeks before an election, some strategists question whether it will be
harder to track early voting at designated polling places. County
officials differ in how many early voting sites they will set up in
elections offices, city halls and libraries. On the weekend, state law
requires eight hours of available early voting and leaves it up to
supervisors to include Saturday, Sunday or both.
Early voting - whether in-person or absentee - is a nationwide
phenomenon. After Florida's election debacle in 2000, the number of
states encouraging early voting grew, and today 29 allow voters to vote
early without giving a reason. In the battleground state of Iowa, for
instance, voters will start making their pick Sept. 23, a week before
the first presidential election.
A July survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
found 19 percent of voters nationwide expected to vote early this year.
The level is considerably higher, though, in states with longer track
records with early voting. More than one in three votes in Arizona,
Colorado and Nevada was cast early in 2000, for instance, while in
Oregon all voting is done by mail, starting this year Oct. 19.
Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood hails the new system as more
convenient for voters. Likewise, many county elections supervisors note
that any vote cast before Nov. 2 is one less potential problem on
Election Day.
The system has its critics. Curtis Gans, a voter turnout expert with the
Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, next week will
release a study concluding that early voting hurts turnout by diluting
the impact of one national Election Day. It also means many voters will
make their decision before they have all the available information.
"What happens if there's a terrorist attack three days before the
election? Or if Osama bin Laden is captured three days before the
election?" he asked.
Such late-breaking developments have happened before. In 2000, voters
learned of an old drunken-driving arrest of George W. Bush five days
before the election. Four days before the 1992 election, George Bush's
defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, was indicted on charges relating
to Iran-Contra arms sales.
But to campaign strategists, those criticisms are mere abstractions.
Their window for turning out the vote has been widened and they're
eagerly changing the way they do politics.
SEIU International President Andy Stern, who is dispatching 2004
organizers to battleground states across the country, sees early voting
as a crucial new tool.
"Early voting is huge because it's like shooting fish in a barrel,"
Stern said. "Once you've shot your fish and see that they're dead, you
don't have to go fishing for them any more."
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