If you didn't get the MEMO, Kerry '04 told us to early vote

[FogerRox]

I left NJ for Broward County FL to work for Kerry. Miramar Pkwy, Miramar. We were told to tell everyone to vote EARLY, so if there were problems, there would be TIME to work the problems out.

If this was a policy of the campaign, then word went out to EVERY early vote state to promote early voting. This MAY have caused a higher % of Kerry voters to vote early, vs election day.

I have posted this within other threads before, BUT I thought it might worthwhile to start a separate thread, belatedly.

Roger

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Vote early and vote often!

[LA lady]

2. Not only vote early but CHECK early

I encourage everyone to check your voter registration ahead of time!! It is difficult to fix at 5p.m. election day, go down there early or at least call a few weeks out.

[FogerRox]

3. What I'm talking about is the topic that comes up everyonce

in a while, is that there is difference between early vote exits polls, and election day polls. If the Kerry campaugn told everyone to vote early then that explains the difference.

RI G H T ?

[BeFree]

4. No, not right

In NC Kerry voters would have voted for the Dem governor, right?

Well, the numbers show the Dem governor getting the same percentage in early as in final day, so no, at least in NC, that is not right.

NC Governor race

GOVERNOR Early
Mike Easley (DEM): 573,120 (55.6%)
Patrick J. Ballantine (REP): 445,505 (43.2%) -12.4

GOVERNOR Final day
Mike Easley (DEM): 1,366,017 (55.6%)
Patrick J. Ballantine (REP): 1,049,527 (42.7%) -12.9

Dem voters did not outnumber Repub voters in early voting.

[FogerRox]

7. Just relating what happened in FL. Do with it as you will.

[_dynamicdems]

5. You might be right about Kerry voters voting early as opposed to Bush

voters. I saw a bit of this holding a Kerry sign at the polls on election day. The first few hours were all honks, smiling faces and thumbs up. As the evening wore on, the Bushies came out. There were insults and nasty faces and thumbs down. It was like vampires coming out after dark. No pun intended, but it was like the diffrence between day and night.

[FogerRox]

8. Is this what you meant.

Florida started voting 2 weeks before election day.

[OnTheOtherHand]

14. sorry to be late to the thread

A few separable issues here. Yes, I think it is likely that early voting had some Democratic skew in several states. I have oblique evidence that that happened in Florida, but I don't have official early voting returns.

Probably any such skew in FL should not have affected exit poll projections very much, but it is hard to be sure.

I've pointed out elsewhere why the ignatzmouse argument about NC doesn't hold up. For what it's worth, according to my analysis of the NC history files, Dems had about a 12-point margin over Reps in early/absentee voting, and about a 10-point margin in election day voting. That difference clearly doesn't explain why the presidential race split out differently than the gubernatorial race -- it's just one little piece of the puzzle. (But I'm not convinced that that particular puzzle is very important, because the final result isn't very weird as far as I can see. I looked before for machine effects in NC, which had a wild and crazy mix of voting methods, and I found very little.)

[Lib Grrrrl]

6. With Regard To Your Graphic...

not just "yes" but "FUCKIN' HELL YEAH!!"

Bet your ass I wanna delete "The Entire Bush Administration!!"

[flyarm]

9. it also may have been the precurser to making it easy to steal votes!!

i was poll watcher in Pinellas co. fla ..and i think it let the theives know how many they had to steal the state by..only earlier!! it believe it is a dangerous presidence..during the time of the primary Aug 2004 someone found the SOE office front door open on a Saturday afternoon...open to anyone who wanted entry..

was it a test ??

for early vote??

i do not trust early vote..period!!

i saw rethuglican christian colleges bring bus loads of sports teams to vote ..i watched and stopped rethuglicans trying to "help" seniors with absentee ballots outside the SOE office ..i saw them filling out absentee ballots for very poor folk/indigents that they brought to vote..i saw them bringing in in large groups mentally retarded people to vote..one of the metally challanged women pulled the tape out of a machine...as she was not being watched ..and i saw a poll worker just jam the tape back into the machine and keep using the machine..until i got a lawyer there and had the machine put out of order...but it was used by many many until the Kerry lawyers got there..and yes i was the only one who saw it..as no one else was paying attention..
no one showed this retarded gal how to vote on the machine..she went to the arong side of the machine and was screwing with the whole back of the machine..she was one that seemed not as severely retarded..but it was obvious the rethugs went to a mental hospital and brought a bus of the challanged to vote..there were two young women handlers for these people..

this early vote made it possible for the rethugs to pad the vote and probably see the turn out..

we had a very heavy Kerry turn out..i would say 8 out of 10...this gave Kkkkkarl a heads up on how the vote was going and it let him know how much it had to be stolen by! and it gave Kkkkkarl plenty of time to get it ready to steal!

fly

[BeFree]

10. Good point, fly arm

Having almost 30 percent of the vote in the can before election day made it possible to determine just how many votes needed to be changed to make the loser into the winner.

Next election, reformers need to carefully examine the early votes, as was done in NC, only this time, before election day.

[Bill Bored]

15. I tend to agree with this.

It's also an excuse for election officials to have fewer machines and precincts on Election Day, disenfranchising anyone who can't drive to the early voting sites, and so on.

Early voting is also used to justify the otherwise unjustifiable purchase of DREs because a few early voting sites in a county need to have hundreds of ballot styles which may only be possible with DREs.

Overall, it's a bad idea and the bleeding heart Democrats who think they're being clever by making it "easy" for people to vote are shooting themselves in the foot.

[mod mom]

11. I never heard this and I was at ground zero (Franklin Co OH). The campaign

workers were told to vote before they reported for GOTV activities, but I never heard this said to others. I headed a 300+ member Kerry volunteer group in an inner ring suburb and I set up election day sites throughout Central Ohio. Remember too, that in Ohio many Dems were the ones who waited in those long lines, so when the late votes came into for Ohio they should have reflected precincts where a high percentage of Dems waited to vote.

Ohio sis not allow early voting, but since the election fell on our shoulders, I just wanted to comment that the late votes that came in should have been DEM. Also remember that Kerry carried many Western states.

[flyarm]

12. in fla all dems were encoraged to vote early ..in fact

the kerry field rep lived with me who ran the kerry office for 3 counties and there were a bank of phone callers recommending people vote early..they called dems for weeks prior to the start of early vote..

in fact kerry had set up bottled water, t shirts, i voted pins , hand held fans for early vote that were taken to voting offices..it was very well thought out and planned for!

just a fyi

fly

[BeFree]

13. Did Florida ever....

... release the early vote numbers, separate from the final day numbers, as NC did?

[FogerRox]

16. yes, I remember

"in fact kerry had set up bottled water, t shirts, i voted pins , hand held fans for early vote that were taken to voting offices..it was very well thought out and planned for!"


Ahh that brings back memories, loading my van with water, handing an "I voted early for Kerry Edwards" button to a 92 yr old WW2 Normandy vet.............

WE had 3 rooms of water in a warehouse in Plantation.