Word: florida
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...Despite the two-to-three-hour waits, the Florida numbers keep growing. As of the close of polls on Tuesday, more than 1.4 million Floridians had voted early, a figure that elections officials say could double by Sunday evening. In Miami-Dade County, where Birgin voted, 162,456 people had cast ballots through Tuesday, over 40% more than during the same period in 2004. In Palm Beach County, site of the disastrous butterfly-ballot controversy of 2000, 56,685 people voted early in the first week, more than in the entire two-week period of 2004. This, despite the fact...
...Still, early voting has evolved into a valuable test run for states after Florida's 2000 debacle, when the entire nation's electoral processes were exposed as flawed and anachronistic. This year the two-week run-up is letting election watchdogs detect potential problems - not just defective voting-booth technology but also the new no-match, no-vote laws that tighten voter-identification requirements at the polls but that critics say threaten to inordinately disenfranchise minority voters. A new concern is the home-foreclosure crisis, which in hard-hit states like Florida may leave thousands of voters without a valid...
...Florida does hold some good news for McCain and the Republicans in the run-up to 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 have. (Republicans also requested far more of Florida's 1.6 million absentee ballots, about 793,000, compared with 573,000 for Democrats.) It's a big reason that despite the Democrats' large early-voter lead, the party holds only about a 6-point edge over the GOP in Florida, on the basis of the party that early voters...
...outcome, as is so often the case in Florida, will be largely determined by the state's huge cohort of independent voters, who make up almost a fifth of the electorate. And that, say analysts, is again where early voting benefits the more potent Obama ground campaign. As more Democratic voters are checked off the list before Nov. 4, it allows his campaign to focus more of its energy and resources on the state's independents and undecideds. "You're simply able to throw that much more at the people who haven't voted yet," says Bishin...
...instead of a weekday when almost everyone is working: Bishin notes that last week, early-voting numbers in Miami-Dade County dropped from 21,000 on Friday to 14,500 on Saturday and 16,600 on Sunday before bouncing back to 24,000 on Monday. Then again, this is Florida, where weekends are for the beach - something practically everyone, Democrats and Republicans, can agree...