In days of the Talmadges (Dem. type) we could vote 'em only if they were dead, not if they were just too dern lazy, apathetic or busy to go vote.

The actual title of this post should be: "Bigger (and more) is not always better -- Part II -- Early Voting."

An earlier post entitled "Bigger (and more) is not always better -- Early Voting" is not labeled Part I because I did not think there would be a Part II. But we'll call this one Part II.

Part I featured an article by Dick Pettys of the AP discussing the change in Georgia law this year that allowed voters to cast a ballot the week before an election, and included comments about the change from Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Kahn and Bobby Klein, communications director for the Georgia Republican Party.

Well, an article in the 8-22-04 N.Y. Times (link is below) makes me feel a bit better about my rather caustic comments about the whole mess.
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In my earlier post -- and knowing I was swimming against the current in my thinking -- I opined:

Early voting -- sounds like a great idea doesn't it? It is in theory, but in practice it has the real possibility of becoming the bane of the election process.

As a kid growing up -- and with the rest of my Boy Scout troop -- during each election season I would work on Get Out the Vote campaigns with my mother who was a very active member of the League of Women Voters.

But having been involved in campaigns for years -- and what I am going to say is especially the case on local races -- absentee voting in Georgia has the potential and in many places is greatly abused. Twenty years ago I tried to no avail to get the ajc and former Attorney General Mike Bowers to review what was happening in Coffee County in the 1980's and take up the fight for me.

I know, it sounds a bit undemocratic; but in practice, 95% of it is legalized vote buying. By working absentee ballots, you can go into a primary or general election with a significant percentage of the vote already determined, and being that only some 30% vote anyway, the number that you need to turn out on election day becomes smaller. Again, this is mostly on the local level.

But now this ability to vote early is subject to the same abuse. I know many who voted during the week before the presidential preference primary and the week before July 20 did so for convenience and because they could, and this is what it was designed for. Absentee voting is for those who cannot vote on the applicable Tuesday.

But the Cynthia McKinney turnout in the week before July 20, as also happened in many local races this year, shows how the process can be abused. I hate to say it, but I predict that in large part this new way to cast our vote is going to come to reak of the same abuse as absentee voting in local elections.

But now the problem, or abuse, has gone from just being local to at least the congressional district (and hey, I know Ms. McKinney would have won anyway; she ran a controlled and effective campaign; her victory is not the issue).

(Lewis Massey and I are good friends, and when he was Secretary of State years ago, privately I used to give him hell for pushing the motor voter registration, etc. This is an entirely different issue, but if you don't care enough to go register, should you be allowed to register. Maybe so, maybe no, and another issue I admit.)

Bottom line -- as a Georgian I am not as interested in a high voter turnout as I am in an informed voter turnout.

When people read my website and see my platform and where I stand on the issues, many conclude hey, he is a just a regular ole Democrat. Now you may see the moderate-conservative part.
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Does the 8-22-04 N.Y. Times article vindicate my saying early voting has the real possibility of becoming the bane of the election process? Your call, but one thing is for sure, it is going to change things, and as suggested in the following excerpts from the article, probably not always for the best:

Between work and his seven children, Felipe Lundin was sometimes just too busy to get to his polling place in Tucson and vote. Then a local Democratic official knocked on his door one day to tell him about voting by mail with an absentee ballot.

"You can't stand over their shoulder and move their hand for them," said Bob Rosenberg, a door knocker in Phoenix. "But you can certainly suggest to them that this is the candidate that deserves their vote."

Up for grabs this year are not just the traditional absentee voters who mail in their votes because they are infirm, away at college or otherwise unable to get to the polls. Since 2000, when the absentee vote became crucial to Mr. Bush's narrow victory in Florida, a half-dozen states have joined 19 others in loosening their rules so that any registered voter can mail in a ballot without being required to give a reason. Most of these states also allow early voting in person at special polling places.

In all, whether by mail or in person, 19 percent of Americans already plan to vote early this fall, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. That number could reach 25 percent or even higher with the push in coming weeks, experts say.

And early it is. North Carolina's absentee voters will begin casting ballots on Sept. 13, a full 50 days before the election, followed soon after by voters in Maine, then Arizona and other swing states. The effect is an expanded voting season that has begun to erode the concept of Americans' coming together as one on Election Day.

"It's election month and a half," [someone observed].

The state parties, furthering a trend already in evidence in 2002, are accelerating their schedules, gearing up activities like rounding up volunteers and releasing advertisements to reach the early voter. But the get-out-the-early-vote phenomenon has further potential implications for how the nation chooses its leaders. Political parties may be able to bank votes when their candidate is up in the polls. They may also be able to soften the blow of hit mail, televised debates or any late-season event that could sway large numbers of voters.

Early voting is also letting political parties get around one Election Day hallmark: the century-old anticorruption laws that force partisans to keep their distance from polling places. The laws do not apply to catching people at home with their ballots, and that has freed party tacticians to devise plans to court the early vote. The plans include helping to register voters expressly to vote absentee, mailing out tip sheets on avoiding errors that could disqualify absentee votes, and collecting completed ballots.

In most states, political parties can find out who is voting from home and when by buying lists from counties showing the voters' addresses, phone numbers and birth dates. In exchange, the parties have to promise that they will not sell the lists to commercial enterprises.

"I have mixed feelings about early voting,'' said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. "It's a benefit for voters," she said, but it is happening this year "in an environment where campaigns are becoming much more precise and aggressive in their attempts to turn out their voters."

Karen Hicks, national field director for the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged as much in describing her party's early voting campaigns. "This is all going to be hand-to-hand combat," she said.

[In 2000 in Arizona, o]nce early voting began, 33 days before the election, party representatives visited each county every day to get the latest names of people who had received absentee ballots. Then, once a week, they got the names of those who had cast their ballots, and that information was loaded into the party's secure Internet site.

The growing body of data let the party focus on people who had not yet cast their votes.