Early Voting Begins
In Presidential Battlegrounds
In Iowa, 'Ballot Chasers'
Seek Decisions and an Edge
Weeks Before Election Day

By JOHN HARWOOD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 27, 2004; Page A1

DES MOINES Iowa kicked off a surge of early voting in presidential battlegrounds, where more voters than ever will cast ballots away from polling places ahead of Election Day. The fast start showed why so many Americans embrace the trend and why it makes others nervous.

Responding to low turnout rates by time-squeezed voters, elections officials nationwide are relaxing reins on procedures to make voting more convenient. This fall, about half the 15 or so states that President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are most closely contesting will allow voters to cast ballots early for any reason. Analysts estimate that from 25% to 30% of the national vote may already be in before polls open on Nov. 2.

For months, both the Democratic and Republican parties have encouraged members to request absentee ballots, through mailings that include detachable application-request forms and phone calls. They also have reached out to independents and dissidents in the other party whom they have identified through phone banks and door-knocking walks as supporting their candidate.
The effort to harvest the early votes began in earnest here Friday, as tens of thousands of ballots were mailed to Iowans who requested them. "Ballot chasers" such as Kerry-backer Bill Summers collected completed ballots from grateful shut-ins who feared they wouldn't make it to the polls. They also encountered skepticism from those suspicious of the prospects for fraud.

"It seems strange to me that you'd be picking up absentee ballots," barked retired state trooper Jack Moore, whose wife, Margie, received one. "How do I know you're going to take her vote and vote it for Kerry, instead of throwing it away to benefit Bush?"

Mr. Summers offered what assurance he could by displaying a blue tag identifying him as an "official absentee ballot courier," trained under state guidelines that entitle him to handle marked ballots. In addition to the state's earnest political traditions, Iowans rely on detailed early-vote regulations enacted by the Legislature to minimize the possibility that partisan operatives could either pressure voters to favor their candidate or destroy the ballots of those favoring the other side.

Some election experts say they don't think the process is more prone to mischief than regular voting. On the other hand, unlike for regular voting, the two parties don't have rival poll-watchers on the scene when most absentee ballots are filled out, so it is hard to know what might go awry.

Following the process over the weekend provides a glimpse into how it works. There was considerable confusion and even suspicion, but that didn't stop Iowans from, sometimes nervously, charging ahead.

Here in Polk County, Iowa's largest, the process began Thursday when election-season temporary workers loaded more than 30,000 unmarked ballots into a rented Ryder truck for the short drive to Des Moines's central post office. From that moment, those ballots are outside the control of elections officials until they land back at the office.

"I'm very comfortable" with the process, says veteran County Auditor Michael Mauro, who oversees local elections. So is postal official Nicole Butler, who receives the ballots at the loading dock. She plans to vote early herself because "my life is just go-go-go" and might preclude a trip to her polling place on Election Day.

The ballot mailing in turn kicks off a wave of telephone contacts by both parties. Operatives begin dialing even before the ballots arrive, sometimes confusing voters by importuning them to vote promptly and schedule their ballots to be picked up.

"Nobody's going to rush anybody," volunteer Claudia Addy, phoning from Democratic headquarters, tells an apprehensive 80-year-old voter named Ruby. "Nobody's going to stand over you."

The early-vote battle opened with Democrats appearing to seize the initial advantage; in the state's 20 largest counties, a Des Moines Register survey showed, absentee-ballot requests from Democrats outnumbered those from Republicans by nearly three to one. Ed Failor Jr., who heads Republican turnout efforts, argues that edge is illusory since Democrats are merely accelerating the votes of large numbers of Kerry backers almost certain to vote in any event.

"We do a better job of turning people out who would not have been likely voters" except by absentee, argues Mr. Failor, who's been around presidential politics since his father worked on Richard Nixon's 1972 Committee to Re-Elect the President.

But Jean Hessburg, executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, insists early votes can provide the difference here for Mr. Kerry, now trailing Mr. Bush slightly in public-opinion polls. As the ballots begin landing in voters' mailboxes on Friday, she deploys an army of couriers with a weekend goal of hauling in 10,000 votes. They line up at headquarters under a sign reading, "Ballot Chasers Report Here."

Field organizer Andrew White hands each one a clipboard with materials and repeats a familiar set of instructions mandated by Iowa law. Only couriers who have completed the training course prescribed by Iowa law may touch a marked ballot. Every voter who hands over a ballot gets a receipt signed by the courier picking it up. Once that happens, the ballot may be touched by no more than one other certified courier before being delivered to the appropriate elections office.

"Can you say, 'Do you need assistance filling out your ballot?' " one courier asks.

"No unsolicited help whatsoever," Mr. White says firmly.

Minutes later, Mr. Summers encounters precisely the sort of circumstance that ban is meant to address when he knocks on the door of 77-year-old Maxine McFadden. "I just got this today," says Ms. McFadden, holding her unmarked ballot and the golf-score pencil that Mr. Mauro mailed out with each ballot. "I'm going to need help on this thing ... I don't know any of these people."

Mr. Summers, by profession a small-business consultant, offers no advice. Wearing a robe and slippers, Ms. McFadden eyes the line on the ballot allowing her to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket without ing any individual candidate. When she asks how to mark it, he explains. Then, when she asks, he seals the ballot in the required "secrecy envelope," places it in a bag, and heads for the door.

"Good, you helped me," remarks Ms. McFadden, a longtime Democrat. She dislikes Mr. Bush, but isn't sure she could make it to the polls in November.

Mr. Moore, the next voter Mr. Summers encounters on his rounds, isn't so sure. As he tinkers in the garage with his fishing boat, he frets aloud that Mr. Summers may be a Republican in disguise seeking to rig Iowa's result the way "Bush stole Florida" in 2000.

Republicans raise concerns from the opposite direction, not about fraud, but rather the prospects that a state government led by Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack is exploiting early voting to tilt the political playing field. Mr. Failor plans to send a direct-mail piece this week that complains about Democrats' use of "taxpayer dollars" on absentee ballots, while urging Republicans to vote by that method as well.

"Why should Democrats be the only ones who vote by mail?" the brochure says. Its message tracks that of automated calls that Democrats say voters have begun receiving from prominent Republicans including U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley.

Students of election procedures say the risks of fraud are different only in kind from those associated with traditional methods of voting by punch-card ballots or their high-tech successors at polling places. One leading expert, Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonpartisan elections-research group in Washington, dislikes the drift toward early voting as harmful to the Election Day civic ritual. But the dangers of "pressured voting" or ballot theft, he argues, are no more inherently likely than those of corrupt tabulation or voter disenfranchisement on Election Day.

In Iowa, elections officials and leaders of both parties say the early-voting system is remarkably free of corruption. "Absolutely microscopic," Ms. Hessburg says of the chance of possible problems with fraud. Her Republican counterpart, Mr. Failor, is somewhat warier but agrees controversies that occasionally flare involve "one or two ballots here and there."

"There are some bugs under the grass," Mr. Failor concludes, "but we don't have a big grub-worm problem."

The process is shaping candidates' scheduling decisions as well as the tactics of their lieutenants on the ground. Mr. Kerry scheduled a Thursday trip to the state to generate enthusiasm as ballots landed in voter mailboxes, though failing vocal chords forced him to cancel at the last minute and send vice-presidential nominee John Edwards in his place.

Mr. Failor casts the effort as a desperate Kerry campaign attempt to get votes "in the bank" before this week's opening presidential debate, after which wavering Democrats may "flake" toward Mr. Bush. He delays the Republican ballot-chase as a waste of resources on the initial weekend, explaining that research has shown that more than 8 in 10 Republicans will promptly return the ballots on their own using the postage-paid envelopes that elections officials provide.

Instead, Mr. Failor dispatches canvassers to generate more absentee-ballot requests in hopes of countering the Democrats' early-voting drive with a late pre-election rush. But the resistance from tradition-minded fellow Republicans makes it difficult for 23-year-old volunteer Tim Rittgers to make much headway.

"We really like to go to the polls," says 76-year-old Mildred Grodt, even as she assures Mr. Rittgers that Mr. Bush can count on her support. When Mr. Rittgers encounters undecided Republicans who appear skeptical of Mr. Bush and want to watch the debates, he doesn't offer an absentee-ballot application form.

Democrats sometimes strike out, too. Matt Unger, who works for a collection of liberal anti-Bush groups called America Coming Together, gets waved off by Democratic voter Lisa Smith. "Golly gosh," Ms. Smith says, "I'm right in the middle of canning tomatoes."

When 83-year-old Dorothy Evenson hands Mr. Unger her ballot a few minutes later, she confesses that "I goofed" by filling it out with a pen instead of the pencil that came with it. Since Polk County's optical-scan voting machines aren't guaranteed to read ballots marked in ink, Mr. Unger labels it "Spoiled" and promises to send another absentee-ballot request form.

By yesterday afternoon, Ms. Hessburg was falling short of her 10,000-vote weekend goal, but said party workers had scheduled more than 8,000 additional pickups on top of the 6,000 votes they had managed to chase down. They didn't, however, include ballots from the skeptical Mr. Moore or his wife.

"I think she's going to the polls with me," Mr. Moore said.