Early Voting and Informed Voters in America

OVER 30% of votes in the 2008 US election were cast before election day. Early voting was introduced to enhance democracy, intended to increase the size and diversity of the voting public, and to improve the efficiency of election administration. But early voting carries risks to the democratic quality of elections. This article shows that in some elections these risks materialised in some elections in 2008. Early voting requires choices to be made before campaigns have ended, missing potentially crucial information. Early voters sometimes differ in their voting compared with election-day voters because they have voted early. In some electoral contexts these differences include more wasted votes and more undervotes. More voters are casting their votes in advance of election day. In national elections in 2010 in the UK, Australia and Sweden there were surges in the numbers voting early either in person or by post. The USA also witnessed a sharp increase in 2008 when over 30% of votes were cast early, double the proportion just eight years earlier. If that rate of increase persists, over half the vote will be cast early in the 2016 US presidential election

Democracy · Disapproval voting · Economics · First-past-the-post voting · Group voting ticket · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential election · Ranked voting system · Split-ticket voting · Spoilt vote · Straight-ticket voting · Voting · Voting behavior · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Public Administration