How early voting is changing elections

With the growing importance of early voting, Schale says, campaigns now have to get their candidate’s story out earlier.

In the old days — eight or 10 years ago — elections were like a book, with a beginning, a middle and a climax on Election Day, he says. “These days, people vote in second and third chapters. So you find yourself sort of having to frontload information. That makes campaigns more expensive.

“I think it’s driving some of this earlier negativity,” he adds. “You don’t want to take the risk that people are voting before they know all of the facts you want them to know about both you and your opponent.”

Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Oregon’s Reed College, says for campaigns, early voting has become a vital tool for mobilizing voters and monitoring turnout. In Oregon, Florida and other states, elections officials make public the names and addresses of early voters — oftentimes just hours after they cast their votes.