So does this mean elections will be two weeks long from now on?
Or does this mean the election will be two months longer?
The New York Times says the "decideds" are coming out early in 32 states.
The above photo shows how they're voting in a Las Vegas grocery store.
In 2004, 22 percent of voters cast an early presidential ballot, and The Early Voting Information Center estimates that number is expected to climb from 30 percent to 35 percent this year.
Time: How Early Voting Could Cost McCain Florida
Early-voting Democrats are outnumbering Republicans at those sites by more than 20 percentage points, Time magazine reported exit polling and 30 percent of Florida's 11.2 million registered voters will have voted by the actual November 4 election day.
"Florida does hold some good news for McCain and the Republicans in the run-up to next Tuesday. The GOP is certainly behind in early voter turnout, but its registered voters have mailed in more than 15% more absentee ballots than the Democrats. (Republicans also requested far more of Florida's 1.6 million absentee ballots, about 793,000 compared to 573,000 for Democrats.) It's a big reason that despite the Democrats' large early-voter lead, the party holds only about a six-point edge over the GOP in Florida based on which party early voters (including absentee ballot voters) are registered with. (The votes themselves aren't actually counted until election day.)"
More important, registration doesn't dictate who one votes for ...
In many states and many parts of battleground states, it's no mystery that massive cross-sections of Democrats vote for Republicans -- particularly on conservative issues.
Fred LeBrun of the Albany Times Union, right here in New York State, reminds us that it's "put up or shut up" for Americans who've complained for years they've been disenfranchised.
The problem LeBrun noted is that early voting is demonstrating how much could go wrong.
We're seeing long lines, the result of that and of numerous breakdowns of various new voting machines many states are using for the first time. Put these together and an atmosphere is created where voting is a lot more work than it ought to be.
If duplicated again and again in voting districts across the country, could this have a chilling effect on new voters particularly, and drive them away? Perhaps. Could it turn the election? I wouldn't think so, but who in their right mind could have conjured as a real possibility the nightmare in Florida in 2000?
New and potential voters may be left feeling dissuaded by the clunky process; turned off, skeptical and disillusioned.
Paul M. Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, warned that Acorn's approach has corrupted the process.
The old story comes to mind of a stranger finding a kid sitting on a curb in Chicago crying his eyes out. The man tried to console the boy but the boy wouldn’t stop crying. “There, there, nothing could be that bad,” the man sad to the boy. “Yes it can. My daddy died three years ago and I hear he came back to life to vote and he didn’t even bother to say ‘hi’ to me,” said the boy.
Weyrich detailed that the Obama campaign has 30,000 lawyers ready to challenge the election in any close state. The McCain campaign having 5,000 lawyers for the same purpose.
With Acorn under investigation in Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- registering 3 million "new" voters since 2004 -- the recipe for chaos seems to have already been set in motion.
It's a good bet that some of those "early voters" relying on either "faulty" computers or paper ballots will be dead or fictional voters. Two weeks of electronic and voter fraud could turn this election into litigated farce -- affecting approximately an estimated 30 percent of the final tally.
Just check out The Brad Blog and it's take on H.A.V.A. (the "Hack America's Vote Act") if you have any doubts about how unstable the 2008 election may already be.
Figure Valentine's Day by the time everyone has this mess sorted out.
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