Early Voting: In or Out?

Supporters of former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, rally before a Democratic presidential debate at Cashman Center, January 15, 2008 in Las Vegas. On January 15, supporters of Edwards could have cast a ballot for the Feb. 5 Illinois primary. But on Wednesday, Edwards dropped out of the race.

According the the Associated Press, 7.2 million Illinoisans could vote in Tuesday's Illinois primary. Thousands already have cast their ballots.

CBS News reported on the new twist Early Voting has brought to this presidential election:

WASHINGTON (AP) ― For many people, the question this year isn't just which presidential candidate to vote for, it's when.

States have done backflips to make it easier for people to vote in advance of election day. Presidential candidates are turning cartwheels to lock in early votes. But in a campaign as volatile as this one, people have to decide whether it makes sense to vote too far ahead. The race is so unsettled that today's champ can be tomorrow's chump.

California, for example, is one of more than 20 states voting on Feb. 5. But people have been able to vote by mail since early January. That monthlong voting season is tantamount to a lifetime in this campaign.

Other Feb. 5 states where voting is under way include Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee and Utah. Early voting in Florida, which holds its primary next Tuesday, began Jan. 14. As many as one-quarter of all ballots in the state typically are cast early.

In all, at least 32 states allow some form of no-excuse early voting, according to electionline.org.

Any vote that a candidate can secure early is precious, particularly when so many states are voting at once and campaigns are stretched thin. Many people like the convenience of voting early. But what about when the contest in both parties is so scrambled?

"The fluidity and uncertainty in the race would normally lead people to hold their ballots," said Paul Gronke, who directs the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. "What is cutting in the other direction is that the campaigns are out there mobilizing people to vote early."

http://cbs2chicago.com/campaign08/early.voting.2008.2.636026.html

That fluidity gushed this week, when Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards dropped out of the race. They both have already recieived votes in Illinois, whose early voting ends today. Did the early voting for supporters of those two candidates effectively disenfranchise them?

The Democratic non-counted Florida primary also had a significant early voting effect. Hillary Clinton won the constest, where voting started as early as December. But Barack Obama won the majority of Democratic ballots cast up to the week before Tuesday's election day. A DuPage County election official told me that she projected in the next few years, "by far the majority of voters will come early. It's just more convienent that way."

The arguments for/against early voting are capsulized by ReformElections.org:

What are the advantages of early voting?

The primary argument in favor of early voting is that it increases turnout by making it easier to vote. Research by Curtis Gans shows that in the 24 states with no excuse absentee voting, turnout increased in 2004 in the aggregate by 6.7 percent, whereas it increased 6.2 percent for the other states. In the 11 states that had early voting in both 2002 and 2004, turnout increased by an aggregate average of 7.2 percentage points as opposed to 6.2 in states without early voting.

In addition to the statistical evidence, early voting is advocated by voting rights groups whose primary concern is making voting as convenient as possible for voters, because it gives them significantly more time to complete their ballots or go to the polls. Some election administrators also prefer early voting because it allows them more time to process ballots, relieves some of the strain on voting systems that occurs on Election Day, cuts down long lines, and reduces the number of poll workers needed.

What are some of the drawbacks of early voting?

The primary drawback of early voting is that mail-in ballots, which make up the large part of early voting, are much more susceptible to fraud than voting in which the voter must show up to the polls. Instances of fraud in which a ballot is stolen from a mailbox and filled out on behalf of a voter, or in which a voter is pressured to vote a certain way, are much more difficult to prosecute away from the polling place.

In addition, the evidence that shows that early voting increases turnout is countered by evidence from earlier elections—1996 and 1988—that shows larger decreases in turnout in states with early voting than in states without it. This research suggests that the voters who make use of early voting are already politicized enough that they would turn out even if early voting were not an option.

Depending on how early voters are allowed to cast their ballots, they could be casting their votes based on different information than the people who are voting on Election Day. Important events sometimes occur days before the election that can significantly influence how people vote.

Candidates could even conceivably manipulate events at different times in order to influence groups voting at different times. Some objections pertain specifically to mail-in ballots as well. In the 2004 election, thousands of ballots were lost in the mail in South Florida alone, a phenomenon which received less press but occurred throughout the country; there are also many reports of voters not receiving their ballots in time for the election, and of the board of elections failing to meet ballot requests.