Apparently there are 4 kinds of voters

[SoCalDem]

1. early voters
2. absentee voters
3. election day voters
4. non-voters

I am having scond thoughts about 2 of those categories.

If you remove the "non"s from the mix, we have 3/4 of the people, possibly having their "votes" known well in advance of the actual election day..

Of course people who register "I" could "pre-vote" too, but my guess is that they are the voters who are less than willing to tell their party, and they may be less inclined to rush out to vote in early voting.

If "election day" is so sacred, why are more and more states turning the whole thing into voting "season" or voting "month"..

Remember how detail-oriented republicans are, and how thorough their databases are.

If 1/2 of the categories vote early, 1/4 are registered, but do not vote, that only leaves 1/4 of the rest to quibble over.

Remember Florida? The early voting was supposed to skew 3-1 for Kerry, and it was all over the media, so of course it was a gigantic heads-up to the repubes.

My guess too, is that people who vote early are only too eager to tell WHO they voted for, so naturally the people who AREN'T getting early votes know just whom to target..and they have ample time to do it.

It kind of reminds me of poker where all the cards are dealt face-up..and all at once.. No bluffs and probably not much betting would go on.

of course no one knows for "sure' that those early voting republicans voted for "their guy", but I think it's responsible for all the reversing polls we are seeing.

In 2 weeks we have gone from "landslide, blowout, rout, massacre, takeover" to
"too close to call, closing, neck and neck, tied, dead heat,etc).."

Add in the buggy machines,voter intimidation on election day, purge lists, and all the other contingencies, and we have a wild roller coaster ride ahead of us, when we all thought we might be on the Sky-gondola...

Nails bitten, fingers crossed, but re-thinking early voting, here in CA.

[Lars39]

1. The republicans in my neck of the woods are encouraging early voting.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. In MT, the early votes aren't tallied until election day. n/t

[SoCalDem]

3. I know they don;t tally the votes, BUT

if they know that 500 registered dems have voted early and there are 250 remaining dems, they can make an educated guess..

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Except the votes are inside security envelopes, so they'd have to

open them all to sort out which are which, and the poll watchers might take exception to that.

Elections can be stolen the same way with paper ballots, after all. It's a lot harder and a lot more risky than just sitting down the street with a networked computer and flipping a bunch of votes.

So be vigilent, get involved in your elections, but let's not get paranoid. In MT both parties encouraged early voting.