When are absentee ballots counted and does anyone see the results....

[whistle]

...before election day? I smell another republican dead fish sinking up the whole process. They have hit this absentee ballot vote extremely hard and they would not do that if they knew it would hurt Bush's chances. So do they actually find out a week or two ahead of time? Do the candidates get to see the counts from the absentee ballots as they are logged in? What's the story?

[Liberal Gramma]

1. It occurred to me

that the Repugs were encouraging their supporters to vote early so their votes would be in before the debacle of the debates. I'm sure there are a few who did vote early who would now like to change their votes.

[Pepperbelly]

2. they are usually the last votes counted because they usually require ...

special handling (ie opening envelops, extracting the ballot, counting the ballot and its votes through some mechanism.) The reason I bring it up like this is because unless the race is very close with the differences being less than the # of A.B.s, there is no hurry on the absentees.

[mopinko]

3. not counted til later

afaik, in most places they are counted only if they would affect the outcome.

[dflprincess]

4. I think it depends on the state

As I understand it, absentee ballots in my area (Minneapolis suburb) are delivered to the precinct the voter lives in on election day and fed into the scanners by election judges after the polls close. I don't know if this is how they're handled all over Minnesota or not.

[Not Me]

5. Greg Palast pointed out on Randi's show today

that election boards are required to acknowledge receipt of voter registration, but not required to even acknowedge an absentee ballot that has been received. Read the ramifications of this however you will.

To make things more interesting, an absentee ballot in Florida, has the party affiliation of the voter printed on the outside, clearly visible to everyone from the mail sorter to the vote tabulator. It's a good thing that vote fraud could never happen here in Florida.

[whistle]

6. Alright, let's say the republiCONs get 20% of their constituents to...

...vote by absentee ballot in a state where 5 million votes are cast on election day. Their republican base is 2 million registered voters the democrats have 2 million and 1 million are independent voters. Thus through polls or other means the republicans believe that 20% or 400,000 registered republicans voted by absentee ballot. How does that help Bush get elected?