I don’t like the idea of early voting at all, but I also just don’t get why either party would take stock in early voting numbers. The result that counts is the one on Election Day, right? Or is there some concern that they lose votes by waiting? In other words, why would I want to vote early?
Its all about manipulating the herd.
Remember in 2000 the great hand wringing over early reporting? Well now the early reporting can come days or weeks early. I’m surprised we don’t have voter amnesty days where voters can vote late.
As far as I’m concerned, voting should be a single day event with no exit polling or tally reporting till all the votes are counted nationwide.
Conservatives like to pride ourselves on independence of thought but unfortunately many are little different than liberals when it comes to the herding instinct.
The Republican party has learned to be very very good at this ground game business - in Wisconsin in 2010, it was the main reason for the Great Red Tide that swept in Scott Walker and a Republican Majority in the Senate and Assembly. Our process in Wisconsin of identifying and contacting Republican voters was futher perfected during the endless recall elections over the past two years.
The chair of Romney for Wisconsin was on Talk Radio encouraging everyone who could to vote early - that way the ground game on election day can be all the more targeted to make sure every voter gets to the polls.
And the architect of this process? None other than Reince Preibus, who now sits at the head of the RNC, spreading the word on how important an efficient ground game is to winning.
The Dems, on the other hand, use early voting for what I call Push-Pull-Drag. They literally drag people off the streets and push them to vote Dem regardless of what they know or don't know about the election.
It's a very good thing that they are behind in that effort, because you can only do so much of that on election day.
“I also just don’t get why either party would take stock in early voting numbers. “
Simply looking for trend differentials in party voting between 2008 vs. 2012, i.e., if there has been a shift in “enthusiasm”, which would appear to be the case in Colorado right now, which is appears to be REALLY bad news for Obama in Colorado. Yeeaaaa, way to go so far for my adopted state!