Word: voter
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...Getting early voting done can be a hassle. A big reason, besides the reduced number of polling sites, is that since there are only a handful of central voting sites, distinct ballots must be printed out onsite to match each voter's particular precinct. In Palm Beach County, for example, there are 185 different ballots. Palm Beach's de facto interim elections chief, assistant county administrator Brad Merriman, has had to enact several changes in recent weeks to ensure those votes "are all accounted for, every step of the way" between now and Nov. 4; one such change has been...
...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 seem to contradict...
...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 voter address to claim. No major problems have been reported...
...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...
...analysts say the practice hasn't been around long enough to draw conclusions. The same holds for the widely held notion inside the parties - especially among Democrats, who are assumed to gain more from higher turnout than the GOP does - that early voting is an insurance policy against low voter turnout on Election...