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Elections no longer a one-day affair

Convenience voting, casting ballots by mail or at an early voting center, has surpassed Election Day balloting, a change that means candidates are finding new ways to engage with voters.

BILL SMITH, BSMITH@NEWS-PRESS.COM
Early voting and voting by mail have eclipsed Election Day balloting in Southwest Florida.

Voting in Florida has become a series of election days, beginning with the first trickle of mail ballots — a month before the traditional Election Day followed by eight days of early-voting,  culminating on the traditional Tuesday.

Convenience voting, allowing people to cast ballots on their own terms over a period of just over a month, is now overwhelmingly the most popular way to vote in Florida.

Ten years ago, two-thirds of the electorate went to the polls to cast their ballots. In the last statewide election, 2014, only a third of participating voters went to their precinct on election day. The rest had already voted by mail or showed up to county election centers during the early voting period.

The dramatic increase in convenience voting has reduced the impact of Election Day, forcing candidates to rethink strategy and stripping the national calendar of a common day of civic engagement. 

"It’s a convenience, people get their ballots three weeks before the election, they have the opportunity to read them over and make their decision and can do it in the comfort of their home," said Lee Elections Supervisor Sharon Harrington, who is up for re-election.

 A 2010 survey conducted for the state Elections Division, six years after the first election that allowed both early voting and mail balloting, found that the two leading reasons given by voters for casting an early ballot were related to convenience.

People liked the chance to vote outside of the legal poll hours and they wanted to avoid the Election Day rush, which had grown to include lines of people still waiting to cast ballots at closing time. The state Legislature helped, by removing limits on when absentee ballots — now known as mail-in ballots — could be used. 

"Old school thought was that there needed to be an election, a 'cliff date' so that everybody had the same amount of information," said Keith Arnold, a former state representative who has advised political campaigns and serves as a lobbyist for clients that include  the city of Fort Myers, Collier County and several healthcare entities. 

"If you were going to vote absentee you needed everything but a doctor’s excuse, you had to provide a sworn statement as to reasons that would qualify you to vote absentee," he said.

The availability of convenience voting has changed the way in which much of the electorate makes its choices, turning traditional election strategy on its head. 

"It means you have to reach voters early, you have to reach them more substantively and you have to reach them defensively, if necessary, because of attacks," Arnold said. 

Former Republican state chairman Terry Miller, who is advising a number of GOP candidates, encourages candidates to tailor campaigns to the new dynamic of an election day every day in the month before traditional Election Day.

“You have to do some things differently, you don’t get that last minute October surprise, you come out the last week of the campaign and bomb your opponent and change the tide of the election,” he said. “If you’re campaigning and you don’t develop a name ID and a message with the voters early, you’re losing valuable opportunity to communicate with them before they’ve gone out and voted.”

Television advertisements, which became the primary means of reaching voters in the late 20th century, remain a strong presence during election campaigns. But the wide window that today's voters have to cast ballots means TV advertisements don't have the impact they did in the days where voters were increasingly bombarded with TV ads as Election Day neared.

"Nowadays it's critical that they reach the absentee voter, it’s critical that they reach them before they get their absentee ballots in the mail," Arnold said.  "Most likely, you're going to reach that absentee voter through mail. TV is less effective, radio is less effective, consequently most campaigns rely on direct mail for the absentee voter."

Mail voting, and to a lesser extent the early voting, give campaigns the opportunity to lock down votes early.  Miller said state-wide campaigns often use sophisticated databases and follow-up contacts. On a local level, the campaign must use a different sort of discipline.

“If you’re going to be as effective you need to spend more time messaging and you need to put more resources into messaging because you need to build a message before the (distribution) of the absentee ballots,” he said. “In the old days, you’d begin messaging a month out, a month and a half out and you’d could crescendo it into Election Day where, really, the elections are close to being decided already."

Evidence of the change in strategy is no further away than the mailbox, which has been crammed with cards featuring candidates' puffery and political action committee attacks.  

Jim Wilson, an Estero city council member, said the volume of political fliers in his mailbox this year exceeds even the propaganda mailings he received while living in a suburban area, Cook County, Illinois, an area known for hardball politics and vigorous campaigning.

Attack ad cards and brochures, many of which have evolved into a self-parodying burlesque of negative political advertising, are mailed early and often, to catch voters when they're ready to mark the ballots.

Southwest Florida voting precincts now handle dwindling numbers of voters as balloting shifts to "convenience" methods, including vote-by-mail and early voting.

But an attack flier can arrive weeks before the voter marks the ballot, giving voters more time to look beyond the postcards. The flexibility with which the public can vote also gives an attacked candidate a chance to respond. That doesn't happen when a political action committee makes an expensive television buy on the last weekend of the campaign.

"The whole idea, historically, behind negative campaign ads in those last few days is to catch the opposition by surprise with a credible or semi-credible accusation and then not give them the opportunity to respond," Arnold said. 

By that last weekend of a campaign, so many people have voted that there are fewer to reach with a last-minute blitz.

Collier county had more people take part in advance voting than voted in the 2014 primary, while early and mail balloting was closing in on the 2014 total turnout by Friday afternoon.

By Saturday evening, Lee County officials had received 90,945 vote-by-mail and early voting ballots which includes nine provisional ballots. By comparison, 87,585 votes were cast in the 2014 primary. At the same time, in Collier County, 32,791 voters had voted by mail and 11,162 had cast ballots at early voting centers.  In Collier County, 38,805 votes were cast during during the last primary election. 

Long road

The popularity of convenience voting in Florida began with changes enacted after the 2000 presidential election was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision on Florida recounts. The changes brought convenience voting into the mainstream. 

Absentee voting traces its origins to the desire of northern states to allow soldiers fighting the Civil War to cast ballots. Most states repealed laws allowing absentee balloting after the conflict ended. Some resumed the practice in the early 20th century, initially so that railroad workers laying track far from home could vote. Absentee voting was later broadened to soldiers in World War I and to people who could prove they couldn't make it to the polls.

But it wasn't until California adopted "no-excuses" absentee balloting, in 1978 that citizens attained the right to vote without showing up at the polls. Florida loosened the reins on absentee voting in 2004. This past July 1, the term for absentee voting was changed to vote by mail, a reflection of its status as an option for which no explanation was sought and none offered. 

Early voting at specified election centers and no-excuses absentee balloting was formalized by the Legislature  in 2004.

Originally conducted for two weeks prior to an election, early voting was changed by the Legislature in a controversial 2011 vote, and is now required for a minimum of  eight days. The revision also eliminated early voting on the Sunday before Election Day.

In 2013, limited Sunday voting was restored. Sunday voting is now allowed for no more than eight hours on the Sunday before election day in any race with a federal office on the ballot. That provision also allows for five additional days of voting, beginning the 15th day before the election.  Collier and Lee counties observe eight days of early voting. . 

A 2010 state Senate interim report on early voting reported that in its first few years, "early voting has not facially had a significant impact on overall voter turnout."  Voters appear to have used early voting to time shift trips to the ballot box.. in the last two non-presidential election years in Lee County, turnout has been 53 percent of the registered voters, while turnout in the presidential election years dropped 14 percent. 

Political scientist John Fortier, in a paper published by the American Enterprise Institute, lamented the loss of "a civic day when the community comes together to make important public decisions," finding that concentrating voting on Election Day has "psychological value" for the country.

Fortier also noted that mail voting is a challenge to the American tradition of secret balloting that began in the late 19th century, and worried about the potential for lower voter interest as the election campaign is spread "too thin over too extended a period."

The sheer numbers of people opting for convenience voting may mean voting polls become obsolete.

Already three states, Washington, Oregon and Colorado, have gone to all mail voting. Elections Supervisor Harrington would like to expand it here to save the cost of poll workers and polling places which can make a city expensive expensive. 

I would personally like to  be able to have our municipalities have the option to go all-mail, rather than open the precincts," Harrington said. "But right now, it's not in the law."

Harrington has 12 workers at each precinct on election day, a number that has not changed over the years because her office can't assume what voter behavior will be.

"The planning is done so far in advance, with the machines and programming the machines — we have to plan as if everybody is going to show up to early vote, and if not, we have to plan as if everybody is going to show up at the polls," Harrington said. "We have to plan for the maximum turnout."

For voters taking advantage of vote-by-mail or early voting, the ability to vote when and even where one chooses has quickly become a sacred right.

Republican voter, Roz Lesser of Cape Coral, an early backer of Donald Trump and an officer in the local Republican Party says it's a good idea to get people out to vote.

"I absolutely support this early voting, mail-in ballots, so that people do not have to wait on these lines," Lesser said. 

She uses early voting because she serves as a poll worker, and must be at the polls  from before balloting begins until the ballot results are transmitted to the central elections office.

Vote by mail is just not for her.

"It is very special to me to actually go to the polls and cast my ballot," Lesser said. "If I feel that way I think that 80-90 percent of the people voting early voting probably feel the same way ... I would never consider a mail ballot."

'Convenience' voting through the years

1865 — Half of Union states allow absentee voting by soldiers in Civil War.  Most repeal provisions after the war is over

1911 - 1935 —  States adopt absentee balloting for railroad workers laying track far from home and soldiers in World War I. But many laws are struck down in court as violations of secret ballot laws.

1942  — First election after start of World War II, Congress permits absentee balloting, but only has authority for federal offices.

1944  —  More states enact absentee balloting in state races for soldiers overseas. American Political Science estimates 2.5 million absentee ballots cast; 5 percent of total in Dewey-Roosevelt race are absentee.

1955  —  Overseas Citizens Voting Rights Act allows Americans living overseas to vote. Rights expanded in 1986

1970 —  Voting Rights Act of 1970 establishes right to vote for president by anyone living in a state for 30 days. 

1978  — California adopts "no-excuses-needed' absentee balloting

1980 —  Oregon begins experiment in mail balloting for local elections, expands to statewide races in 1993 and to state-wide vote-by-mail in 1998

2000 —  Florida absentee voting: 14 percent

2002 —  Laws passed for easier absentee voting, and early voting at option of counties.

2004 —  Florida early voting: 30 percent 

2004 — Half of all states have no-excuses balloting

2011 — Florida early voting rollback passed as lawmakers delete language of pending bill and substitute new version in late night session. Measure signed by Gov. Rick Scott cuts early voting period from 14 to 8 days, eliminates balloting on Sunday before election day, allows reduction in early voting hours from 96 to 48 over eight days. Democrats say measure designed to hold down minority vote.

2016 — As of July 1, all absentee balloting becomes known as vote-by-mail. Convenience voting in Lee County surpasses turnout of previous eleciton.

Staff writer Melissa Montoya contributed to this report. 

Absentee and Early Voting Trends, Promises and Perils, The AEI Press, 2006