Record numbers voting early this year

WASHINGTON -- It's a watershed event in what some are calling a watershed election.Across the country, Americans are turning out in record numbers to cast their votes early, with some standing for hours in enormous lines the likes of which are usually seen on Election Day.In Louisiana, some early voters waited up to five hours to cast their ballots. In Florida, lines have been so long that Gov. Charlie Crist extended voting hours statewide.In Texas and Tennessee, neither of which is a battleground state in this year's presidential race, early voting is occurring at never-before-seen levels."We're seeing record numbers everywhere," said Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, a nonprofit organization in Houston that represents election officials.Roughly one-third of all voters will likely have cast their ballots by the time the polls open on Election Day.That's a significant jump over the last presidential election in 2004, when 22 percent of Americans voted early. In 2000, just 15 percent of voters cast their ballots early.Some polls suggest that Democrats are voting early in greater numbers than Republicans and that many groups are coming out to vote early that haven't done so in the past.In Georgia, for example, African-Americans are voting at a higher rate than whites. In fact, 36 percent of registered African-Americans in the Peach State already have voted, according to the Early Voting Information Center, a nonpartisan research center at Reed College in Portland, Ore.Election officials say a number of factors have caused the upsurge this year.One of the biggest reasons may be the presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, which has galvanized the voting public in the same way that the contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon did back in 1960."Obama-McCain has become sort of a watershed event in the sense that it is bringing people out in huge numbers," Lewis said.Both candidates and the political parties have been urging voters not to wait until Election Day to place their votes. Obama, in particular, has put together a coordinated effort to get his supporters to the polls early. "If not today, do it tomorrow," he said during a recent rally in Indianapolis.Another factor is that more states are offering voters the chance to cast their votes before Election Day on Tuesday.Back in 2000, when early voting was relatively new, just 11 states had provisions beyond traditional absentee balloting.Now, all but a handful of states allow some form of early or in-person absentee voting, according to data compiled by the Early Voting Information Center.How the votes are counted varies from state to state.Some states allow the votes to be counted before Election Day, but prohibit the results from being tabulated and made public until the polls have closed on Tuesday. Most, however, won't even begin counting the votes until then, Lewis said.Early voting is such a relatively new phenomenon that it may take several years and several big elections to sort out its impact, said Tom Wilkey, executive director of the Election Assistance Commission, an agency created by Congress to improve the election system.Election officials had hoped that early voting would mean shorter lines on Election Day. But this year's presidential race is expected to bring thousands of new voters to the polls and result in a record turnout, raising the possibility that voting lines on Tuesday will be just as long as they have been in past elections, if not longer."It will be interesting to see, in the states that we know have had an early voting turnout, how much that alleviates the pressure on Election Day," Wilkey said.But, "you need to have a series of elections before you get a good handle on the kind of effect it is going to have," he said.If the presidential race turns out to be another squeaker, it's possible that, given the heavy volume of early votes, problems counting the ballots could cause a delay in projecting a winner, several election experts said."But I don't think that is likely in this election," Lewis said. "My guess is we'll have a pretty good handle on this at least by the next day, probably by the next morning.''The Senate races could be a different story, said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center.Polls show tight races in a handful of states, and the outcome of some of those contests could be decided by just a few ballots, Gronke said.A high percentage of early voting and absentee ballots could mean the winner of some of those races will not be known for several days, he said. (E-mail Michael Collins at collinsm(at)shns.com.)