NAFTALI BENDAVID, WALL STREET JOURNAL
A series of political and legal changes to U.S. voting practices is sparking an important struggle this election season to determine who exactly will cast votes.
Early voting began last week in North Carolina. Several other key states—including Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin—will start in coming weeks, prompting the two parties to race to gain an edge.
At the same time, many states have new laws requiring voters to present photo identification. Democrats fear the measures will discourage minority voters, while Republicans say they protect against voting fraud. Before last year, just two states, Georgia and Indiana, had voter-ID laws. Since Republicans took control of many state governments in 2010, 10 states have adopted such laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, an advocacy and public-interest law firm that tends to side with liberals on voting issues.
In addition, in some states, officials are working to purge the rolls of ineligible voters, but face some resistance and skepticism.
The battle over these changes will affect the shape and scope of the 2012 electorate. It isn’t clear how broad the effect might be, but this is a race in which even small changes in turnout in key states could matter.
“This is a close election, and both parties are competing on all the terrain they can,” said Paul Gronke, of the Early Voting Information Center at Oregon’s Reed College, who has spoken against some voting restrictions.
“Both parties are trying to mobilize their segments of the electorate,” he said, “and to the degree they can get them to cast an early ballot, they can direct resources to voters who have not turned out.”
The presidential race began its stretch run over the weekend, and early signs suggest that, while the race remains tight, President Barack Obama may have reaped a slightly larger benefit, or “bounce,” from his party’s convention than Republican Mitt Romney did from his.
The largest change in the shape this year’s vote will come from the rapid expansion of early voting—the process that lets voters cast ballots before Election Day. Thirty-five states now offer early voting, and the share of the vote cast early is certain to rise this year. In 2008, some 40 million people, one-third of the electorate, voted early, Mr. Gronke said.
The early-voting season is just starting. North Carolina, site of the Democratic convention, went first, with mail-in ballots becoming available last Friday.
Thus, candidates increasingly treat campaigns as having a series of rolling election days, not just one. Mr. Obama has traveled to Iowa, another important state with early voting, four times in the past month.
His message wasn’t subtle. “In Iowa, you don’t have to wait until Nov. 6 to vote,” Mr. Obama told a crowd in Urbandale recently. “You can be among the first to vote in this election, starting Sept. 27.”
The Romney campaign also is pushing supporters to vote early. Republican officials estimate that 75% of the votes in North Carolina, 60% in Florida, 57% in Iowa, and 60% in Nevada—all battleground states—will be cast before Election Day. “There’s a plan in place, and we’ve taken a methodical approach to build our support” through early voting, said Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney’s political director.
The phenomenon is also reshaping congressional races. “You can’t put your ad up in the last five days of the campaign,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), who is coordinating the Democratic Senate races. “It makes the last-minute ad much less effective.”
One Republican strategist said many House candidates now must, in effect, think in terms of two election days: The initial burst of votes cast when early voting commences, and the official Election Day.
Traditionally, early voting has been thought to work to Democrats’ advantage, because it gives working-class and minority voters—often sympathetic to Democrats, but hard to get to the polls—a broader chance at voting. But Republicans mounted an aggressive early-voting campaign this year during a contentious governor’s recall election in Wisconsin.
Partisan battles have flared up. One erupted recently when the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature eliminated early voting on the final three days before Election Day, saying officials needed the time to prepare.
Critics said Ohio’s move was a way to shut out minority voters. In the final three days of the 2008 presidential race, about 93,000 Ohioans, many of them African-Americans, cast their votes. Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, which works to mobilize minority voters, called it “part of a coordinated and undemocratic effort by some politicians to erect barriers to the ballot box.”
But State Rep. Mike Dovilla, a Republican who supported the change, noted that Ohioans could still vote for weeks until the final three days.
“If you can’t cast a ballot in 35 days, whose fault is that?” Mr. Dovilla said.
A federal court recently sided with opponents of the change, saying the Ohio law violated the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantee, because military service members were still allowed to vote on those final three days.
But most of the legal battles over voting revolve around new laws requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license. Normally, voters simply have to sign their name.
For Republicans, checking ID is considered a measure to fight fraud. Democrats say there is little evidence of voter fraud and that the laws are racially motivated, citing research showing that roughly 25% of African-Americans lack photo IDs, compared with 11% of all Americans.
Republican leaders say Democrats are seeking to demonize the GOP as anti-minority. “It’s McCarthyite demagoguery,” said Michael Carvin, a Republican lawyer involved in voting issues.
Legal fights over voter ID are mixed. A federal court recently threw out a Texas law. State courts upheld a Pennsylvania law, and legal battles have entangled Wisconsin and Missouri statutes. A federal case on a South Carolina law is under way.
Another battle over the shape of the electorate stems from a push by some Republican officials to eliminate noncitizens from voter rolls. Democrats see it as an attempt to intimidate Latino immigrants, who often vote Democratic, saying there is little evidence of a significant problem with fraudulent voters.
In June, a federal judge refused a request by the U.S. Justice Department to stop a move by the state of Florida to overhaul its voting lists. READ MORE