Early Voting Impacts Florida Elections –But How?

By Frank Derfler see www.derfler.net

“Vote early, vote often” is an old joke. But voting early is the real thing in Florida this year. One or more polling places opened fifteen days before the election in each of the 67 Florida counties. They’re open at least 8 hours a day every weekday and a total of 8 hours over the weekend. Early voting is the lead topic on drive-time news and talk radio shows and it rates coverage on every local version of the “Six O’Clock News”.

The first day of early voting was a real mix. Polling places in less populated counties, like those I visited in Monroe County, were happy places with 5-10 people per hour moving through the process. Reports from Miami-Dade County in the Miami Herald tell of new voter verification systems failing under the press of voters on the first day.

Early voting in Florida is receiving a lot of attention from the major political parties. The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates jetted across the state urging everyone to vote. Television shows in the Miami market can hardly develop a story line between back-to-back political ads. The presence of controversial amendments to the state constitution on gambling and attorney fees makes things even more strident.

Since only a smaller than usual number of polling places are open for early voting in each county, the placement of the open polling places is controversial. If an open polling place is in a neighborhood likely to be firmly Democratic or firmly Republican, there are complaints. Governor Jeb Bush attacked the placement and quantity of polling places in the county containing the city of Jacksonville. One polling place in the city center is supposed to service the entire county.

You can find any theory you want about the impact of early polling. Some pundits say that a longer polling period makes it easier for people who punch time clocks (presumably Democrats) to vote. Others say that it makes it easier for older veterans and their wives to navigate the traffic in order to cast their anti-Kerry votes. Some hope that the longer polling period will serve as a “break in” time for the several types of new polling devices purchased to replace controversial “hanging chad” paper ballots. Finally, how about the thousands of Floridians who were dislocated by the Hurricanes? Will the longer polling period make it easier for the dislocated to vote? Do they care?

One complete unknown is the impact of early voting on polling. If people vote early, do they tune out the rhetoric, lead more peaceful lives, and reduce the validity and projectability of breathless minute-by-minute voter polls?

How about the impact of some major event between now and November 2? What if Osama is found hiding in a Baghdad basement surrounded by a cache of Sadaam’s chemical weapons? What if any candidate says or does something stupid? Should voters wait until the last moment in order to make the best-informed decision? Will an important event happening in the two weeks before the election have less impact on the outcome of the election because people already voted?

There are legions of factions and lawyers who want to use early voting to sway the results one way or another. The Congressional Black Caucus was in Miami and civic leaders led a march demanding that their votes count. A lawsuit is challenging the validity of touch screen voting machines because they don’t produce an adequate paper trail. And all of this is two weeks before the real polling day. One sure prediction is that things will be hot in Florida for the next few weeks.