Word: floridas
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...This year Florida Republicans are probably worrying that it's too late to fix things, and much of that angst stems from early voting. Many of them, in fact, may be wondering what the GOP-controlled legislature was thinking in 2002 when it approved the practice. The answer is that it had to do something in response to the presidential-vote-recount debacle that embarrassed the state in 2000. And early voting, which allows voters to cast ballots during the two weeks prior to Election Day at a limited number of polling sites, seemed to benefit the GOP in Florida...
...year, early-voting Democrats are outnumbering Republicans at those sites by more than 20 percentage points, and a WSVN-Suffolk University poll has Barack Obama leading over John McCain 60% to 40% among early voters. What's more, the number of early voters could approach 30% of all of Florida's 11.2 million registered voters by the actual Nov. 4 Election Day. That massive turnout prompted Florida's GOP governor, Charlie Crist, to flash his bipartisan bona fides this week and lengthen early voting on weekdays by four hours (while letting each county decide whether to lengthen the normal hours...
...Florida, the nation's largest swing state, with 27 electoral votes, is one of 36 states that allow early voting, which increases convenience for voters and reduces Election Day stress for officials. Other states, like Nevada and Georgia, are seeing similarly high turnouts...
...custom has become particularly popular in the Sunshine State, where many voters have come to view it as a hedge against Florida's notorious Election Day mishaps and misdeeds. The added factor this year is the enthusiasm among Obama voters, especially African Americans eager to elect the first black President (if not avenge what they call the Florida disenfranchisement they suffered in 2000). An unusually vast Obama ground operation in Florida has galvanized early voting, bringing movie stars like Matt Damon into Tampa for early-voter rallies and holding drum-line marches in Miami's predominantly black communities. Most polls...
...Benjamin Bishin, a political-science professor at the University of California at Riverside who has studied early voting in Florida, says this year's turnout seems to bear out research on two fronts. One is that early voting "disproportionately rewards campaigns that are better organized" because it often requires more refined voter-mobilization efforts than regular voting does; the other is that it "lowers barriers to participation," especially for hourly workers, who can least afford to take time off from work on election Tuesday. "And the fact that these voters are waiting two or three hours in line, which would...