Early voting starts next week, which means that Virginians who have signed up to be on the permanent list of voters who receive an absentee ballot in the mail will receive them soon.
Starting next weekend, people who have signed up to be on the permanent list of voters who receive absentee ballots will receive them in the mail. For campaigns, the permanent list of absentee voters is changing how they approach the campaign, which is now a 45-day season instead of a single day.
"For states that do early voting and have long early voting periods, like Virginia, in some cases, that actually has the effect of decreasing overall voter turnout," says Jennifer Victor at George Mason University. "Because you miss the sort of excitement and the climax and the importance of Election Day as a single focal point event."
The permanent list is only a few years old, so campaigns are still trying to navigate how it changes their get-out-the vote operations. And Karen Hult at Virginia Tech says this year is adding a new sense of ambiguity.
"There is some degree of uncertainty that still exists about whether early voting or absentee voting, especially by mail, is actually going to count," Hult says. "And that may itself depress votes."
She says campaigns might try to front-load the early vote operations – getting the ballots to election officials before any changes prevent them from being delivered in the mail.
