Early Voting: Convenient for Voters, Challenging for Campaigns

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2010— -- Election Day is still more than two weeks away, but Americans across the nation are already heading to the voting booths and casting their ballots.

Russ Erby of Franklin County, Ohio, was among the first people to cast his ballot. He took advantage of the state's early voting that started Sept. 28.

"I might not be able to come on Election Day and this way, I'm done," he said.

Such convenience has apparently appealed to more and more Americans with busy schedules.

"We're making it as easy as possible," Bill Anthony of the Franklin County Board of Elections said. "You shouldn't have long lines at all. We're processing folks really quickly."

More than 40 states have some form of early voting, either in-person via a voting booth or by mail (what people know as absentee ballots), according to the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore.

About one-third of the ballots in the 2008 presidential race were cast before Election Day, according to the information center and the Associated Press.

A similar percentage of Americans could vote early in this year's midterm elections, analysts say.

In Ohio, which features competitive races for governor and Senate, more than 600,000 ballots were requested in the first week of early voting, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4. For perspective, that's about 15 percent of the total votes cast in the 2006 midterm election.

In Iowa, there have been 119,430 early votes cast so far, which is 13 percent of the total number of votes cast in 2006.

Even first lady Michelle Obama took advantage of the convenience of early voting, casting a ballot Wednesday at a voting center in her hometown of Chicago.

At an event earlier this week, Obama encouraged Americans to follow her lead.

"Early voting has already started here in Illinois," she said at the campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias. "And we need you to get folks to the polls so they can start casting their ballots this week.

"We also need you to find those folks who are planning to sit this one out, and we need you to tell them that they can't vote just once and then just hope for change to happen."