Iowa early voting update: 110,675 ballots returned 62% democratic ballots

[WI_DEM]

IOWA reports 110,675 returned ballots as of Friday morning.


Iowa html 110,675 Party Reg
Dem 62.0%
Rep 19.9%
None/Oth 18.1%
7.2% 1,543,662 36.0% 10/

IOWA reports as of Thursday morning:

Party Ballot Requests
Dem 160,285 51.9%
Rep 82,545 26.7%
None 66,011 21.4%
Other 256 0.1%
Total 309,097

http://elections.gmu.edu/early_vote_2012.html

Here is another report:

Campaign 2012: Early voting a boon for Democrats in Iowa

“By this point in the 2008 election we had received just over 9,000 requests for absentee ballots,” he said. “As of Tuesday, we had already received almost 15,000.”

Certainly those who monitor polling stations have noticed the increase.

“We saw triple the number of voters this year over 2008,” said Kara Logsden, community services coordinator for the Iowa City Public Library, which hosted a satellite voting station on Sept. 27. According to Logsden, the library is the city’s premier satellite station. “We had 766 votes cast in just one day,” she said.

Iowa is unique among states in that almost any place can serve as a satellite polling station. All it takes is a petition with 100 signatures, and a hospital, a church, or a grocery store can transform itself into an official election site. The minimum time period is six hours, but a site can function for one day or several.

Early voting is a good sign for Democrats, said Slockett. “The Obama campaign has been incredibly effective at getting voters out early,” he said. “They have a very organized campaign and they have worked hard. The Republicans have taken a partisan position on early voting, saying that they are concerned about election fraud. This costs them votes — people like the convenience of being able to vote early.”

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.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/highway-2012/campaign-2012-early-voting-democrats-robocalls-iowa

[oswaldactedalone]

1. Early voting is extremely important

everyone here should do it and encourage others to do so as well.

[frazzled]

8. And yet absentee ballots are less likely to be counted

or at least more likely to be contested. From yesterday's NYT:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — On the morning of the primary here in August, the local elections board met to decide which absentee ballots to count. It was not an easy job.
he board tossed out some ballots because they arrived without the signature required on the outside of the return envelope. It rejected one that said “see inside” where the signature should have been. And it debated what to do with ballots in which the signature on the envelope did not quite match the one in the county’s files.

“This ‘r’ is not like that ‘r,’ ” Judge Augustus D. Aikens Jr. said, suggesting that a ballot should be rejected.

Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor here, disagreed. “This ‘k’ is like that ‘k,’ ” he replied, and he persuaded his colleagues to count the vote.

...

Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

“The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.”

Election experts say the challenges created by mailed ballots could well affect outcomes this fall and beyond. If the contests next month are close enough to be within what election lawyers call the margin of litigation, the grounds on which they will be fought will not be hanging chads but ballots cast away from the voting booth.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html?pagewanted=all

Campaigns want people to vote early because it locks them in before some untoward event occurs in the final weeks (world situation, bad debate performance, etc.). But if your vote is strong and unflappable, I still advise you to vote in person.

[Jennicut]

2. Repubs really fell down on this one.

Dems saw the clear opportunity to promote early voting. Repubs put it down so why would their voters overwhelmingly choose it. No matter, good for us.

[hrmjustin]

3. I would not be surprised if Obama wins IA by 20,000-40,000 votes.

[marezdotes]

4. FYI -Here's a list of your states early voting rules

http://www.longdistancevoter.org/early_voting_rules.

[jenmito]

5. I saw on MSNBC this morning that Ds are leading big in IA but Rs are leading big in FL & NC

among early voters.

[WI_DEM]

6. In North Carolina they don't begin in-person voting at polls until later this month

and that is where the Obama effort really will be--actually taking voters and voting in person.

[jenmito]

7. That's good to hear. n/t