Early voting options succeed in early votes, and early chaos

By Jane Musgrave

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 15, 2004

Giving people the chance to freely cast absentee ballots or vote early was supposed to make the most basic of constitutional rights quicker, saner and blissfully hassle-free.

But there was no evidence of any of that Thursday at elections offices in Palm Beach County and on the Treasure Coast.
 Two days after the first batch of absentee ballots was mailed and four days before early voting is to begin, elections offices were swamped. Phone lines were jammed. Voters were stuck on hold, waiting as elections workers scrambled to answer questions.

Late in the day, workers from various campaigns sat in their cars outside the Palm Beach County elections office slapping labels on brochures before heading to a nearby post office in hopes campaign materials would hit voters' mailboxes the same day their absentee ballots arrive.

"It's a nightmare," Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said.

"We're running around like little mice on a treadmill," agreed Emma Smith, Martin County's deputy elections supervisor.

And in case voters aren't whipped up enough, President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry and other traveling political shows are going to be in the West Palm Beach Beach area in the next few days, urging people to take advantage of their new voting options.

Academics and political consultants who have watched the effect of early voting and so-called no-fault absentee voting in other states are not surprised by the frenzy.

While there is little evidence that the two get-out-the-vote innovations increase turnout, there is no doubt that they drastically alter the elections process, experts said.

"It's changed the way the game is played," said Robert Stein, a dean and political science professor at Rice University in Houston who tracks the new options that have turned Election Day into merely the last day to vote.

"You don't peak for a day, you peak for a month," said Democratic pollster David Beattie, whose clients include Florida U.S. Senate candidate Betty Castor. "You have to sustain a higher level of communications for a longer period of time."

Headaches for elections workers have been exacerbated by a variety of factors, not the least of which was being hit with two hurricanes at a crucial time, LePore said.

Elections officials had barely finished counting votes in the Aug. 31 primary when Frances hit, closing offices for at least a week. Then just as they were making headway, Hurricane Jeanne swept in three weeks later, closing the offices again.

The lost days would have hurt in any election year, but this year events conspired to make it worse.

Scores of groups have been going door to door, registering new voters and encouraging them to take advantage of a new state law that allows them to vote early in what is expected to be one of the closest presidential elections in history.

Further, Democrats, stung by the 2000 presidential election debacle, have spent months fueling distrust of electronic voting machines and urging party faithful to vote absentee so there will be a paper record of their ballots should a recount be needed.

Consider: a record number of new voter registrations, a record-number of absentee ballot requests, a record interest in the election and less time to pull it off.

LePore said she has hired about 100 new workers to process voter registration applications and absentee ballot requests. Another 50 will begin next week to staff early voting at eight locations around the county.

She also bought two additional machines — at $75,000 a pop — to process the record-setting 125,000 absentee ballots — nearly double the 63,000 cast in 2002, the first major election since the legislature in 2001 agreed people could vote absentee simply as a matter of convenience.

"People don't realize what's involved in putting on an election," LePore said.

On the other side, most people don't realize how complicated a campaign becomes once early voting and no-fault absentee voting — where the voter doesn't have to certify he can't be at the precinct on Election Day — are added to the mix.

Campaign workers waited in LePore's office Tuesday to get disks with the names of the first 67,000 people who were mailed absentee ballots so they could blanket that voter segment with campaign materials. Each day, workers wait to get preprinted labels of absentee ballots sent that day.

While it's labor-intensive, it's simply not wise to ignore what could be as much as 25 percent of the vote, said Mike Edmondson, political consultant for Palm Beach County sheriff candidate Ric Bradshaw.

"You can't risk not educating people about your candidate," he said of the mailings, known in the trade as "absentee chasers."

While Bradshaw's mailer is generic, some campaigns have tailored their message to absentee voters.

"Before you fill out your absentee ballot...," begins a brochure from a group opposing a constitutional amendment that would increase the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour.

Stein, the Rice professor, said studies have shown that early voting and absentee voting prompt politicians to run what are essentially two separate campaigns.

"It changes the whole strategy," he said. "They harvest their core vote early and then concentrate on the fickle vote."

Strategists love the absentee and early vote because it allows them to get loyalists out of the way so they can devote full energy to those still sitting on the fence.

One of the reasons absentee and early voting don't increase voter turnout is because most of those who take advantage of the options would have voted anyway, said Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington.

States that adopted the two outside-the-voting-booth methods actually had worse turnouts than states that stuck with Election Day-only voting, he said, citing an exhaustive study his group completed last month.

Those involved in this year's campaign insist that won't happen in Florida.

Numerous groups have blanketed the state, registering new voters and now contacting them to make sure they vote.

Rallies are planned throughout the state on Monday, the start of early voting, said Joy-Ann Reid, a spokeswoman for America Coming Together, a national union-backed group working to turn out Kerry voters.

"We're completely engaged in the early voting mode," she said Thursday.

Canvassers are hitting neighborhoods, reminding those they've registered to either vote absentee or vote early.

Various attention-grabbers are planned by the Republican and Democratic parties. The Palm Beach County Young Democrats, for example, are seeking a permit to camp outside the election office Sunday night "to get the press to say we were the first people in the county to vote Bush out of office," according to their permit request.

Because the two voting innovations are relatively new to Florida, the exact impact won't be known until the results are reviewed after Nov. 2.

"This may be a sea-change election in regards to the early vote," said Linda Hennessee, political consultant for sheriff candidate Ken Eggleston. "My experience in (other states) is that it takes a couple of election cycles for people to get into it."