{"id":337,"date":"2012-09-25T13:30:22","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T20:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/politika\/?p=337"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:10:21","slug":"how-many-people-vote-early-or-when-50-becomes-45-becomes-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/09\/25\/how-many-people-vote-early-or-when-50-becomes-45-becomes-17\/","title":{"rendered":"How many people vote early? Or when 50% becomes 45% becomes 17%."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There have been some breathless stories over the last few days that vastly overstate the number of Americans who are likely to cast an early ballot, in person or no-excuse absentee, in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

Kyle Inskeep of NBC News titled his Sept 21st story: \u00a0“Early Voting: Half of US Begins Voting Tomorrow.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Michelle Franzen of MSNBC repeats the statement:\u00a0“Early Voting Begins in Many States.”<\/a>\u00a0 The title on the video says “Early Voting Expands” except that early voting has\u00a0not<\/strong>\u00a0expanded substantially since 2008 and in at least three states (GA, FL, OH) has been somewhat restricted. \u00a0Details, details.<\/p>\n

What’s the problem? \u00a0Inskeep is\u00a0strictly\u00a0accurate if, when you hear “half the nation” you think “25 of 50 states, not counting DC.” \u00a0But I think most of us think “half the nation” means\u00a0half of the voting population.\u00a0Just like the U.S. Senate, Inskeep counts Wyoming as “1” and California as “1” even though Wyoming’s population is only 1.5% of California’s.<\/p>\n

44.8% lived in states that have started early and absentee voting as of September 22nd. \u00a0It’s a less sexy number than “half” but it’s the right one.\"\"<\/p>\n

States also vary dramatically in\u00a0how many\u00a0voters cast an early ballot. \u00a0In Delaware, for example, one of the states listed by Inskeep, over 95% of ballots were cast on Election Day in 2008. \u00a0Among the states that began early voting on September 22, six (Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hanpshire, New Jersey, and South Carolina) collected more than 90% of the ballots on election day.<\/p>\n

In only nine states (Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) did early votes total more than 30% of all votes in 2008. \u00a0For two o these, Georgia and Texas, the overwhelming majority of “early” votes are not cast no-excuse absentee but early in-person, which does not start for a\u00a0few weeks<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

If you “deflate” the population ratio by the proportion of voters in each state who cast an early ballot in 2008, half the population is now a paltry 17%.<\/p>\n

Along with the brickbats should come the roses. \u00a0Aaron Blake at The Fix<\/a>\u00a0is going to update a spreadsheet with early voting totals on a regular basis (drawing on this site among others), and while the Aaron Blake still says that “huge chunks” of voters cast early ballots in some key battleground states, he does remind the reader that the early voting figures represent a tiny fraction of the electorate at present.<\/p>\n

In Oregon, which mails its ballots 18 days before the election, seldom are 50% of the ballots returned a week before election day. \u00a0In other states, the totals are between 1\/3 and 1\/2 of the\u00a0early votes\u00a0have arrived 7 days prior to election day. \u00a0Most early voting occurs in the last week of the campaign.<\/p>\n

It’s true that early voting has started in many states, and will start in more states in the upcoming weeks. \u00a0And it’s also true that both campaigns will be mobilizing those early votes as a way to\u00a0“bank” voters. \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0But this doesn’t mean that half the country is going to tune out from the presidential contest or\u00a0miss the debates<\/a>,<\/p>\n

And by the way, if you think voting early will\u00a0save you time in line,<\/a>\u00a0think again.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a02008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections,<\/a>\u00a0MIT Professor\u00a0Charles Stewart found\u00a0<\/a>that the average wait time for Eleciton Day voters in 2008 was 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

And for early voters? \u00a020 minutes–5 minutes longer (compare slides 4 and 5).<\/p>\n

The early bird may get the worm, but he’ll have to wait in line for it!<\/p>\n

(Crossposted from Earlyvoting.net<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been some breathless stories over the last few days that vastly overstate the number of Americans who are likely to cast an early ballot, in person or no-excuse absentee, in the next few weeks. Kyle Inskeep of NBC … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-paul-gronke","category-political-commentary","category-voting-and-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}