Program Director Steven Hill had an excellent article/opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times on November 5th:

(Excerpt) All across California, millions of voters didn’t wait for election day. They didn’t hear any of the last-minute appeals from the candidates. They made up their minds weeks ago and filled out their absentee ballots in the comfort of their living rooms or at kitchen counters.

Many political scientists and commentators hail the convenience of absentee voting as a milestone in democracy, with the potential to boost voter turnout. The absentee ballot allows voters to vote "at their own pace," said Mark Baldassare, director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California.

The dramatic upsurge in absentee voting began in 2002, when former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley implemented the state’s "permanent absentee voting" law, which allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail. In the 2003 recall election, nearly 40% of the votes cast (3.2 million) were absentee, while in the June 2006 primary, the percentage reached 47% of the 5.2 million votes tallied.

For Tuesday’s election in California, absentee voters could outnumber those going to the polls. Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, believes that this trend may climb to 60% or higher in his lifetime. (Nationwide, 30 states allow absentee or mail-in voting, and experts estimate that 20% of the voters in the midterm elections will have made their candidate choices before Tuesday.)

But the rise of absentee voting, while convenient for voters, is a headache for political campaigns. Consultants and strategists plotting campaigns are struggling to understand the emerging political landscape. With nearly half of eligible Californians voting by mail, influencing their votes has made campaigns longer and more expensive and helped undermine campaign finance reform. "Three weeks before election day, you now have 20% to 25% of the vote already cast," said Dan Schnur, a leading Republican political and media strategist. "The complexion of the entire election has changed."

Click here to read the rest of the article.