VERY encouraging article on early voting in Iowa...
In Iowa, anyone who wants to vote before Nov. 6 has to request an absentee ballot. That can be done through the mail or in person, at the Auditor’s Office or a satellite station. A registered voter just shows up and fills in the absentee ballot on the spot.
In Iowa, that figure may be even higher. Statewide, election officials have already received more than 274,000 absentee ballot requests. The majority of the requests are from Democrats — more than 150,000, with just over 61,000 for Republicans. The remainder are from those with no stated party affiliation.
In Johnson County, as much as 55 percent of the vote may come from absentee ballots, according to blogger and activist John Deeth, who has been studying Iowa voting patterns.
“It is still a month before the elections and we are seeing numbers more consistent with a week before the elections,” he said. “There has been an upward trend toward early voting over the past 20 years.”
In Johnson County, requests for Democratic ballots were outpacing Republicans by a very wide margin, said Slockett.
“So far we’ve had 9,981 requests from registered Democrats, 1,762 requests from Republicans, and 3,273 requests from those registered as No Party,” he explained. “But the No Party people tend to be young, and they tend to vote in roughly the same proportions as the general population.”
Iowa City is home to the University of Iowa, and is considered something of a liberal bastion in the state. According to Deeth, it may not representative of the state as a whole.
“This is by far the most Democratic county in Iowa,” he said. “But Democratic numbers are up all over the state. The president has a clear advantage right now.”
full article here:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/highway-2012/campaign-2012-early-voting-democrats-robocalls-iowa
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