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Technically, today is sort of election day in Ohio, Vermont, Georgia, South Dakota, and Iowa, given that voters can start voting in person for the midterm elections.
Vote by mail ballots are being mailed out today in Ohio, and this is the first day individuals can vote early in person. There is also one week left in which you can register to vote in Ohio. The result is a special, one-week window in which voters can both register and cast their ballots at the same time at their local county board of elections. Not surprisingly, both major parties and other political organizations are holding rallies today to get their supporters to vote early. From Cincinnati.com:
Today is the day when boards of elections mail out the thousands of absentee ballots voters have asked for in written requests; and the first day when voters can show up in person at county boards of election to cast ballots in the Nov. 2 election.
Both sides saw what happened in Ohio two years ago, when the Obama-Biden campaign pushed voters out of their homes and to the polls by the tens of thousands well before the November election, thus locking up voters who otherwise might change their minds.
The mind-set of both parties has changed – the object now is to get as many early votes in hand as possible.
What is happening today in Ohio mirrors what is happening all over the country. Over the past several years, states have increasingly given voters options to vote early or by mail. As a result, more and more voters have started casting their ballots days and weeks before the first Tuesday in November. In Ohio, roughly 30% of votes cast in 2008 were vote-by-mail or early in person voting.
The result is that, in many states, we don’t so much have an election day as an election month. There will be at last some Americans filling out their ballots everyday from now until November 2nd–something politicians need to keep in mind.
This means that, in the “final weeks” of the election, there is less potential for strong shifts in polling based on new developments since many of the votes will already have been cast. With voting officially underway, the most recent Gallup poll shows the generic congressional ballot tied at 46.
Personally, I encourage everyone when possible to vote early or by mail. It is easy to be caught up in some unforeseen problem on election day that prevents you from getting to your polling location. Voting early is the best way to make sure you cast your ballot.
15 Comments
Question do they count the ballots as they come in or wait until election day?
Has the GOP attacked this new idea as open to voter fraud?
I don’t suppose early vote by mail results will be announced if the votes are counted as they come in by mail.
The teabag candidate in Florida 22 is making the teabag people proud by going into wingnut batsh*ttery:
Okay, I still retain a “secret” security clearance. “Secret” is just the basic security clearance all service members get just for being allowed to serve. What a Moran.
wait until election day
That is, if they are counted. Regarding DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting systems, there is no way to verify that the results are even tabulated, let alone tabulated correctly. The systems can be programmed to simply spit out a result.
Wonder if Goldman thinks these things too? Hmmmm … :
- from “Goldman Releases Most Bearish 2011 Outlook Presentation Yet, Sees S&P In 725-800 Range In QE2 Case,” by Tyler Durden, Sept. 28, 2010
Lots easier than getting dead people to the polls. If Diebold had been around in 1960 Mayor Daley could have given JFK 34 million votes from Chicago alone.
That’s right up there with “If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”
But the downstaters would have given Nixon 40 million more. (Yes, kiddies, the unspoken truth is that Nixon’s operatives were just as sneaky, if not more so, than Mayor Daley’s.)
By the way, even without Chicago, JFK still won — he had Texas, which gave him enough EVs to win.
I recall reading that a majority of members of the electoral college favored Nixon and threatened rebellion since they are under any legal obligation to award their votes to the peoples’ choice. Glad they didn’t follow through, since it would have established a terrible precedent. Still, a little disturbing to realize that in our alleged democracy a mechanism has always been in place to disregard the preference of voters.
I’d have thought it went without saying that Tricky Dick was at least as crooked as Daly. In 1960 politics was still like the Wild West, no-holds-barred. Somehow Nixon failed to discern that by 1972 the rules of the game had changed slightly, still managed to get off scot-free, though.
I don’t know if the GOP has but I sure am. Voting by mail is a very easy way to commit voter fraud. Remember ACORN signing up all those dead people and then allowing them to vote 50 times each?
If we want to eliminate voter fraud we need to associate each vote with a person’s social security number. If you did that people could vote on line.
what you are talking about is pure nonsense. ACORN did nothing of the sort
WTF are you talking about. ACORN signed up people yes. Then as they were submitting registration forms, they isolated and high lighted the questionable forms as they were required to do by law.
And your “idea” about using Social Security numbers as a voting ID is directly contradicted by the law that says specifically that social security numbers are not to be used as IDs (even though it is honored more in the breach)
And you can actually read that on your personal social security card if you actually bothered to do so.