Early voting for the November 2nd General Election officially begins in Iowa next Thursday, September 23rd. Both parties and their candidates have been working their strong supporter lists, urging people to vote early by requesting absentee ballots or by voting early beginning on Thursday at county elections offices or satelite polling places.
In fact, the first ballots may have already been marked. In Johnson County, Iowa, the first batch of absentee ballots were mailed out on Friday and started hitting mailboxes on Saturday. Some of those ballots may very well have been marked and sent on their way back to the Auditor's office already. Other counties will be getting ballots in the mail next week.
The technical game in getting out the vote will be interesting to watch. Parties will work a variety of methods to encourage their strongest supporters to vote early or by absentee. By getting strongest supporters to the polls, the parties can get their most likely voters' votes "in the bank." Rolling results of the early get out the vote efforts may give some additional insight into get out the vote efforts. Numbers on early votes by party are available through county elections offices fairly quickly, some counties update them in nearly real-time.
How will pollsters adapt to this environment? What pundits--if any--will get it right?
The November election is on. Stay tuned.