Election 2008: Early Voting The Wave Of The Future.
Posted Jan 14, 2009 at 8:08 AM by Maurice Berger
Dr. Michael McDonald of the Department of Public and International Affairs George Mason University has recently undertaken an extensive (and excellent) analysis of state-by-state early voting paterns in Election 2008. His conclusion: traditional Election Day voting patterns are changing rapidly: "In the presidential election of 2008, approximately 39.7 million or 30% of all votes were cast prior to Election Day, November 4, 2008. This is a significant increase from 20% in 2004 and part of the upward trend experienced since 1992, when 7% of all votes were cast early. These numbers are likely to increase in subsequent presidential elections as more states adopt early voting and more voters become comfortable with the practice." In another analysis, McDonald determines that the actual number of people who voted for president in 2008 was 131.3 million people. Expressed as a rate, this was 61.6% among those eligible to vote, an increase of 1.5 percentage points over 2004. "Since reaching a modern low in 1996, turnout rates have been increasing for three consecutive presidential elections--an increase that disputes the conclusions of many political scientists that the temperament of the American voter and voting itself have invited declining turnout rates: the decline in civic society, lowered trust in government and the tuning out of the electorate by television, among others: "Indeed, turnout rates are now in the low sixty percent range, the same level as the "high" turnout rates in the 1950s and 1960s. This despite the inclusion of lower participatory 18-20 year olds in the electorate and what I preliminarily estimate to be a half to three quarters of a million rejected mail-in ballots."
