Consensus seems to be that early voting merely moves a subset of Election Day voters to vote earlier and does not appear to expand the electorate.
Though this 2013 study evaluating impact of early voting on the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections would indicate that where early voting is implemented without other so-called election reforms it might actually reduce overall turnout.
“The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself.”
And promoting election reforms can engender push back from local election officials who can be a powerful political force with influence over the Secretary of State and legislators.
I’ve always told people the same thing. I grew up in Shawnee, OK. If your family has lived in the state for three generations, its basically impossible to NOT have some Indian ancestry (and, as was noted upthread, most folks of tribal ancestry call themselves Indians, not Native Americans).
I grew up across the street from Sac and Fox land, played golf at the Sac and Fox res right south of town (which also now has a casino and a nice medical clinic, among other things on it), 15 miles from Western Seminole nation rez, 30 miles or so from Choctaw rez. Did a minor in Anthropology and did research around that area as well. Oddly, there are no Shawnee nearby, they are mostly up in Kansas I think.
Bottom line, your family would have to be very very careful to not have native ancestry around there, but unless you are on the tribal roles, nobody gives a damn. It is just background noise.
There is no better source/analyzer/historian of Nevada politics and elections than Jon Ralston.
And so remember, we’re SO NOT gonna get excited by early vote totals. We just aren’t.
But if we were, Nevada provides really robust early vote figures. They break down early vote #s by party ID and also county-by-county…and few states are as easy to extrapolate information from than Nevada.
Early voting just started today. So take this all with a grain of salt, and understand that tomorrow and the next day and days after may be hugely disappointing.
BUT.
Washoe County (That’s Reno/Tahoe) has a voter id countywide of Republican +2. Today in the first day of early voting, voters ID-ing as Democrats beat Republicans 49-34. In Clark County (Vegas), it was 48-34. And the vote totals were high. Very high.
Of huge importance in elections going forward: Florida has Amendment 4 coming up on the November ballot. It would restore voting rights to up to 1.4 million disenfranchised paroled former felons in the state. A federal judge found Florida’s restoration of this population segment was so painfully slow and mired in red tape that it was unconstitutional.
Gillum is for it. DeSantis against it. It’ll fast-track if passed (it looks like it could pass, btw, though it needs 60%), and those voting rights will be restored before the 2020 elections.
That would be kind of a big deal.
EDIT: adding some context onto that crazy CNN poll for Gillum:
It is worth noting that Gillum is a Tallahassee guy, and was very visible around Hurricane Michael, filling sandbags, visiting devastated areas afterwards. And DeSantis airing attack ads during the hurricane and immediately afterwards (and Gillum calling him out for it) may have had an effect, too.
They were already getting taken to task for that story by Nate Silver last night, and then this morning NBC put out their newest poll of a generic ballot, and found that it was Dems +9, after being Dems +8 a month ago.
Their main citation is Wasserman, who’s always a bit conservative (in the traditional sense, meaning “more cautious”, rather than the red vs blue sense) in his estimations. His 70-75% model explicitly (and there was a fascinating back and forth between Nate Silver, Dave Wasserman and Josh Marshall on Friday night on twitter about this) does not take into account fundraising numbers. Silver’s model does.
The problem is a headline like “Dems continue to be favorites to win House” doesn’t get as many clicks as one that suggests things are getting shaken up and it’s a horse race.
Vikings football broadcast just opened with three ads hammering 3 different Republicans on gutting pre-existing conditions. Dems clearly (and please God correctly) think that’s a winner.
Now, if they wanted to highlight that Republicans feel emboldened by their Senate prospects even as House and Governorships may be slipping away…that’s a solid story, and maybe does tell a unique enough narrative. But…yeah.
That’s kind of awesome. Because it IS a winning argument for Democrats, I think.
And Republicans in the last week or so have been trying to steal it. You’ve got congress-persons out there saying they’ll protect patients with pre-existing conditions who VOTED for the AHCA last summer…which would’ve done away with those protections.
Good on Democrats in closely contested Minnesota for not letting them get away with it.
One could say that these sorts of headlines are meant to scale people into voting? After all, we all thought Hillary was a shoe in and lost the election, despite winning the popular vote.
Contrary to what Republicans say, the media is not in any way interested in getting you to vote for Democrats, or vote at all. They don’t care what you do after you click the story and/or share it.
