Early & Absentee Voting Megathread - Build the Freiwal

[Tintrlvr]

An Atlanta EV location 2.5 hours after the polls closed last night:

https://twitter.com/TIAreports/status/1058532344099942402

2 things I don't get:

* why are there lines in the first place ? There should be enough early voting precincts and voters should be assigned to their precinct, so that there's a cap of 500-1000 voters per precinct. Which would mean there are no lines.

* why are these people waiting 5, 6 or 7 hours in a line to vote early ? If they could do so in 5 minutes on election day ? Or by postal ballot ?

There are usually only a few or just one early voting location per county, so there’s not nearly enough capacity when turnout is high. Republicans have of course pushed to cut back locations over the years since Obama made early voting a big part of his 2008 strategy, too.

I don’t really know why people wait in long lines. Some of them maybe can’t easily get to their polling place on Election Day but for many it is likely performative of their enthusiasm.

[Tintrlvr]

If Souls to the Polls is strong today, Democrats could overtake the GOP

I think the Dems will have at least around a 20-30k lead in early votes in Florida by Election Day. The remaining unreturned absentees are strongly D, and even if the return rate there is only 50%, Ds will tie the absentee vote. And the Ds are already around 10k ahead among in-person early votes and should based on history put up very strong numbers today (Sunday before Election Day is always the strongest D in-person early voting day in Florida because of Souls to the Polls), my guess is at least another 10k margin but possibly significantly more. Whether that is enough for Nelson and Gillum is not completely clear but assuming independents are much more favorable (or, rather, less unfavorable) to the Democrats than they were in 2016, which seems reasonable to expect, it should be.

[Tintrlvr]

If Souls to the Polls is strong today, Democrats could overtake the GOP

Are all Counties in Florida allowing Early Voting to run through Nov 4th (Today)?  The state's website says:

voting periods for 2018 are:
General Election:  October 27 – November 3, 2018

In addition, each county Supervisor of Elections may offer optional days of early voting in addition to the mandatory early voting period.  Each Supervisor of Elections may choose from one or more of the following days for 2018:  October 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 and/or November 4, 2018

Most of the urban counties are, including all three counties in SE Florida, Orange County, Pinellas County, Hillsborough County, Leon County and Duval County, along with the mostly small counties in the panhandle affected by Michael. Most of the smaller and mid-size counties are not. Generally, the list is quite favorable to the Democrats because it's largely Republican-leaning counties that aren't voting today. (I didn't do the calculations, but I strongly suspect Clinton won the vote in 2016 in the counties that are open today by a sizeable margin since it excludes many of the big Republican counties like Lake, Sumter, Collier, Brevard, Sarasota, Pasco, St. Johns and Escambia, while only excluding one Clinton county, Alachua.) Full list is here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article221015740.html

[Tintrlvr]

I read on twitter, some polling stations in parts of Florida panhandle are open today, is that true ?

Untrue. Early voting is over.

You're wrong. They extended early voting in certain Panhandle counties due to the hurricane and the delay in being able to send in absentee ballots.

Ah, ok. My mistake. What counties?

Bay, Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf and Jackson

Which means what EV we get today will probably be an uninformative wash since half the voters there are Dixiecrats.

Most early votes counted for today statewide will be newly returned absentees. I doubt there are more than 5,000 votes total cast in person in those counties today but today will be a big day for late absentees (which have skewed strongly Democratic while earlier absentees were Republican - a typical pattern).

[Tintrlvr]

Any chance the GOP narrows the Dem's EV lead by a meaningful amount via extended voting in these Panhandle counties? I know some of them still have artificially high Dem registrations, but I don't think that's the case in places like Bay.

There will be too few votes cast there to matter. E.g., yesterday Bay cast around 3,000 votes, and it’s by far the biggest one. Also note that at least Bay is trying to get everyone to vote early because they’ll only have six (out of the usual 44) precincts open on Election Day due to the hurricane, so this is really cannibalization.

Finally, as I noted before, late absentees will swamp the remaining panhandle counties in today’s report.

[Tintrlvr]

Colorado Update vs this point in time in 2014 (in parenthesis)

Democrats 423,791 (446,448)
Republicans  424,010 (558,966)
Independent  364,716 (359,496)

TOTAL  1,227,135 (1,379,562)

Rethugs had a 114,000 vote lead at this point in time in 2014, compared to a mere 301 vote lead now. Overall turnout is rather disappointing though.

I have no idea why you have a blue avatar when you clearly despise the Republican Party. But at any rate, I wonder what these results foretell for tomorrow.

Because blue looks cooler than red. Everyone always went for the blue raspberry Otter Pop over the cherry one.

I see. I'm still interested in hearing any perspectives on how the elections in Colorado will go tomorrow.

Not an expert, but I would say it will go as such.
Early vote will be a practical tie.
Election Day vote will go big league to the Ds.
Coffman loses, while CO-3 is close, but in the end stays with the Rs.
Polis is elected governor.

This is so ignorant.

1). Colorado is entirely vote-by-mail. The vast majority of the ballots are in. What "election day"?

2). This is the first time in modern history that Democrats have returned more ballots than Republicans. Democrats dominate among CO indies, and will absolutely destroy Republicans based on the ballots that have been returned so far. There is absolutely 0 chance that the votes returned so far will be "practically a tie."

He's right in the sense that ballots turned in today and on Election Day will be strongly D, as late mail-in ballots always are pretty much everywhere.

There is also an option to turn in your ballot in person, though few people do so.

[Tintrlvr]

TBF, Colorado still has county-wide "vote centers" where people can vote in-person, register same day, drop off ballots, etc. I forget the exact proportion but I think it's something like one per every 20,000 - 30,000 people. I think there are also minimum #s of vote centers too for smaller counties.

In my opinion Colorado's 2013 reform bill was one of the best you can do (+AVR they did later). Send ballots to everyone but also let them vote/register in person.

Yup. The only improvement I would make to Colorado is count all ballots post-marked by Election Day (not just received by Election Day). You should be able to wait for closing arguments to vote (especially for Presidential elections where the candidates aren't tailoring their timing to the mail-in voting states).