Vote early, vote often: the US election has already begun

You can vote early by post, or even in person, well before election day. Two states, Oregon and Washington, have done away with polling stations altogether: all their voting is conducted by mail. And in 27 states, you don’t even need a special excuse to cast your ballot in advance.

That includes some of the key battlegrounds where the outcome is still up for grabs: Iowa is just one of the places where early voting begins today – and you can bet that Obama and Romney’s campaigns have been working flat out to make sure they don’t miss an advantage.

In Iowa, there’s even a partisan battle over where to vote. Local laws mean you just need a hundred voters to choose their own polling station, whether it’s in a grocery store, an evangelical church, or a trade union hall.

The election will essentially be won or lost before Election Day. Michael McDonald, George Mason University

The measure was intended to make voting easier – but it has allowed the parties to choose places most likely to appeal to their own supporters: which, say critics, could put off people who might want to vote for the other side, calling the whole issue of fairness into question.

At least voting by post is uncontroversial, right? Wrong again. You could say that early voting helps those with better resources: getting the message out as soon as possible could make all the difference. And whatever happened to that civic moment: the single day when the country gets together to make its choice?

Ahead of the game

Whatever your view, there’s no doubt that voting ahead of time is getting more and more popular. It’s estimated that in this election, as much as 35 percent of the vote will be cast ahead of time.

That’s a lot of votes – so many, that Michael McDonald, from the US Elections Project at George Mason University told Talking Points Memo: “The election will essentially be won or lost before Election Day, unless it’s a tight, narrow, razor-thin margin.”

And that isn’t some kind of wild assertion. Just take Colorado, another swing state, where as much as 85 percent of the votes could be cast before November the sixth. In 2008, almost 80 percent of Colorado’s ballots were cast that way: high numbers also turned out early in other critical states: Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida.

Of course it’s impossible to tell which way all these early voters will decide. In 2008, the Democrats had a rare advantage, but that was something of an aberration, bound up with the huge surge of enthusiasm for Barack Obama’s historic campaign.

This time, the Democrats insist they’re still ahead of the game. In Iowa, Democratic strategist Greg Hauenstein told The Hill that Obama’s team were “just blowing the Romney campaign out of the water”.

Obama’s Organising for America has maintained a constantly staffed field office in Des Moines since 2008: as soon as this year’s election kicked off, more offices opened across the state.

Advantage: Democrats?

National campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher told reporters that early investment was paying off: “We’ve been registering folks and keeping an open conversation going with undecided voters for months, to build an historic grassroots organisation that will pay off when the votes are counted.”

But the Republicans claim they are far better organised than they were four years ago, and Mitt Romney is certainly far better funded than was John McCain. Republican National Committee Political Director Rick Wiley claimed earlier this week that party activists had already knocked on a million more doors than the entire 2008 campaign, and made six times as many phone calls.

On Tuesday, Senator Rob Portman urged crowds of supporters in Ohio: “How many of you have already gotten your absentee ballot applications? The best thing we can do right now is bank votes, so vote absentee!”

But with Romney trailing further and further behind Obama in almost every national poll, not to mention the battleground states, some Republicans are openly worrying that he hasn’t done enough to catch up.

With requests for absentee ballots by Democrats far outstripping their rivals in Iowa, former GOP official and blogger Craig Robinson voiced it out loud: “I’m wondering, have they neglected it too much? Is it too late?”

But there are six weeks still to go and history shows that anyone who’s still wavering isn’t likely to rush into a decision. Michael McDonald has some words of comfort for the Republicans: “The sorts of voters who are voting right now are people who have already made up their minds. They are hard-core partisans.”

It seems there is still plenty at stake with plenty of voters left to persuade before that election clock stops ticking. In 2012, it’s all about turnout, by mail or in person – however soon, and however late.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News