Election Extension

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13746-2004Aug18.html

 

Election Extension

 

By David S. Broder

Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A25

 

How long until Election Day? More than two months, you

say -- what remains of August, plus all of September

and October and one day in November.

 

Wrong. The election starts well before Nov. 2. Voting

begins in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on

Sept. 13, barely three weeks from now. At least 17

other states will open their polls before the end of

September. By Oct. 18 voting will have begun in all

but six states. And in 29 states, you can vote early

without providing any reason for your choice.

 

The phenomenon of early and absentee voting is

altering campaign strategies for both President Bush

and Sen. John Kerry -- and for independent groups

supporting the rival candidates. The data just cited

come from BIPAC, the Business Industry Political

Action Committee, which has launched a major effort to

mobilize member companies to persuade employees to

fill out their ballots at their convenience, well

before Election Day.

 

" Our message, " BIPAC's Bernadette Budde said at a

recent briefing, " is that Nov. 2 is the last day to

vote. " The goal, she said, is to reach 20 million

employees with mailings that include the voting

records of the candidates on " business issues " and

thereby produce 711,000 extra votes in 18 target

states.

 

The business side is far from alone in going after the

early and absentee votes. When the Democratic National

Convention took place in Boston late last month, Iowa

Gov. Tom Vilsack reported that his state party already

had collected more than 30,000 absentee ballot

requests.

 

" The beautiful part, " he explained, " is that you can

track those ballots and keep on the people until you

know they have filled them out and sent them in. "

 

The effectiveness of the technique was shown in a

recent special election for the lone House seat in

South Dakota. The seat, which had been held by a

Republican, was won by Democrat Stephanie Herseth. As

BIPAC's Budde noted, more than 10 percent of the

voters took advantage of the no-excuse absentee voting

option. The remarkable thing was that of the 31,708

people who requested absentee ballots, 30,600 returned

them. Herseth's margin was 3,005 votes.

 

As more states have opened up their voting laws, more

and more people have availed themselves of the option.

Oregon is the only state where all elections are

conducted through absentee ballots. But the custom has

spread in California, where voters may request that

they automatically receive absentee ballots for every

election, and many other states, from Arizona to

Wisconsin, where no-excuse absentee voting stretches

Election Day to a full month.

 

BIPAC cited Census Bureau statistics to show the

potential for increasing turnout through early voting.

In 2000 the post-election census survey found that

some 19 million registered voters did not cast

ballots. Only 10 percent of them said out-of-town

travel on Election Day was the problem. More than

twice that number said they were too busy to vote, and

almost 15 percent blamed illness or some other

unexpected emergency. Weather and transportation

problems accounted for a few more.

 

By focusing on those nonvoting but registered

citizens, the barriers -- real or imagined -- to their

casting ballots can be overcome, and elections can be

won.

 

Of course, there are disadvantages to the early voting

as well. People who fill out their ballots in

September or early October do not have the full period

of the campaign to inform themselves. There may be

late developments -- a debate performance or

disclosure of something in the candidate's record --

that could cause them to switch their support.

 

A BIPAC memo offers suggestions of circumstances when

a campaign ought to promote early voting. They include

situations in which the polling suggests the opponent

is about to overtake the candidate, when some item of

late-breaking negative news is anticipated or when

some development gives the candidate " a temporary

buzz. "

 

All this suggests that lengthening the voting period

does not eliminate efforts to manipulate the results

by rival campaigns. But signing up absentee voters is

a healthy form of participatory politics, and when it

comes to elections, the more participants, the better.

 

It's a good thing both sides have discovered how to

stretch Election Day into election weeks.

 

davidbroder

 

© 2004 The Washington Post Company