Absentee Ballot Information

College Progressive at FLA Politics has written a post detailing all the contact information relevant to requesting absentee ballots. You can get that information here.

DECs should really be pushing vote by mail, as was detailed in my postmortem on the SD3 Special Election. Its very hard for our candidates to win when they begin Election Day with a several thousand vote deficit.

Obviously, the key thing to do here is to take this valuable information CP has researched and put them into materials that can be passed out to members and activists in the field. This valuable information also should be put on most party literature.

Update: kansasr has a wonderful form that he used during the 2006 Elections. Check out his comment over at FLA Politics. They had a nice system going, and I think its something that could be easily duplicated elsewhere.

"Voting by mail" must be stressed at every possible moment.

Steve Schale on Absentee Voting

Steve Schale is the Political Director for Florida House Victory, the arm of the FDP dedicated to electing Democrats to the Florida House of Representatives. Steve was instrumental in Darren Soto's win in the special election in HD-49 earlier this year.

Successful absentee ballot programs require real resources. The Republicans
spend literally tens of millions each cycle on their program and have it
greased into a science. HD 49 was the first time we really invested a
substantial amount into a race like this for absentee ballots, and proved we
can go toe-to-toe when the resource ratio is closer to even.

In 2006, the FDP and the legislative caucuses also worked together on a
smaller program, which made a substantial difference in several races. It
is not like we haven't wanted to in the past, for example in HD 3, we did
not have the resources to run a comprehensive program, largely because we
made the decision in October 2006 that we needed to take advantage of our
chance to win now. Elections become about making the best decisions with
the resources you have available.

Volunteers can play an important role in absentee programs, but work much
better when added to the formula of paid phones, mail and staff. It is like
the old saying: Do not bring a knife to a gun battle--If we are going to
compete with them in the absentees, we have to do it all out.

Unfortunately, these days financially we cannot match them everywhere all
the time, which is why it is important to pick our spots, so where we do
play, we can do it right.

It will take time to train our supporters to vote by mail, but you are right
that it is important to start early. In addition, the new absentee rules
give local parties an excellent reason to begin canvassing voters,
especially in communities with lower voter turnout rates. This is where
your volunteer programs can make the biggest difference, because there is
the time to fully develop and execute a program.

One last thing on absentees, not even Katherine Harris could have stolen the
2000 elections if Al Gore had not substantially lost the absentee vote.
That may be the most important lesson to remember.

Pushing Absentee Voting

One of the big lessons I've learned for the Senate District 3 special election (which occurs on Tuesday), is the need for the Democratic Party, particularly local DECs to push absentee voting as early as humanly possible.

Republicans typically "out request" Democrats by around a 2 to 1 margin (sometimes even 3 to 1 or higher) in the absentee ballot column. At least this is the story in Marion County and most of North and Central Florida. This means that our Democratic candidates go into Election day with a vote deficit, which has to be overcome by both Early Voting (another area where Republicans tend to beat Democrats) and regular Election Day voting at the polls. And we wonder why we lose.

However, this was common knowledge in the Democratic activist community long before this special election - so why hasn't anything really changed? For starters, things have changed a bit in targeted races.

In the Special Election for House District 49 earlier this year, which was a race targeted by the Florida Democratic Party, heavy resources (phones, canvassers, knock and draggers, etc...) were spent on absentee and early voting. The Democratic candidate in the race, Darren Soto, won that election handily with 52.1% of the vote. Democrats bested Republicans in all three categories: Early Voting, Absentee Voting, and Election Day Voting. This was a district that was previously held by a Republican.

So its possible for Democrats to overcome Republicans in the critical absentee ballot column, but its not easy. Republicans have been training their voters for years to vote absentee, so this has become second nature to them. Democrats on the other hand haven't, and we're thus behind the curve. But, as HD49 demonstrated, Dems can do this.

How do we do this?

In Marion, for the SD-3 special election, we believed that converting our supervoters in absentee supervoters could be done. This was true to a degree. Some supervoters did make the switch, but most are very set in their ways. The Marion supervoter is a much older voter who has a long history of voting at the polls. So why all of the sudden should I vote by mail, regardless of whether it helps the party or the candidate? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to them - a vote is a vote.

So a big lesson was learned: our recurring absentee voters probably won't be supervoters. Chances are, they're going to be younger and less frequent voters. These voters have jobs, families, lawns to mow, etc... Absentee voting (and early voting) is probably a lot more appealing to them.

I'll tell you by 2008 whether this strategy works...

In the meantime, DEC leadership should be stressing to party regulars, club leadership, and club members the importance of absentee voting. Here are the highlights I used to convert several dozen Democrats at the club level:

"Absentee voting is the most secure and safest method of voting." With the new law mandating paper trails, this statement is becoming less usable, but for the meantime it is. We're not sure how long its going to take the state to implement this new law. Until then, voting absentee guarantees a paper trail.

"Absentee voting = Votes in the bank." If more Democrats vote absentee, that means on Election Day, the DEC, the FDP, the DNC, and the campaigns can spend their precious resources on voters who actually need a push (irregular voters, younger voters, disabled or elderly voters, etc...) Democratic voter turnout will be much better, and more Democrats can get elected.

"Absentee voting helps our hard working candidates." Based on the reasons I cited above, absentee voting will help our candidates by putting votes for them "in the bank." They can concentrate the resources of their campaigns to getting more Democrats who typically wouldn't have voted out to vote.

"Absentee voting helps you." Absentee voting, in addition to being the safest and securest method of voting, is also the easiest and most efficient. By calling the local Supervisor of Election's office and giving them your name, date of birth, and verifying your mailing address, a request is made. Voters are done is less than a minute. The ballot is mailed to you, and all you have to do is fill it out and send it in with standard postage. This is the way its done in Marion, anyway.

One final suggestion for DECs in encouraging absentee voting is to use their websites by creating a webform for absentee voting. Completed forms are emailed to the local Supervisor's Office, and requests can be made that way as well. Blast emails sent out from the DEC can push supporters to vote absentee by giving them an easy link to the webform.

Absentee voting is critical to future Democratic victories, and DECs must play their part by strongly encouraging it among their membership and support base as well as building absentee voting into their field and campaign plans.