So I am running a Absentee or Early Voting program for a local Council at Large

[WCGreen]

campaign. It's not an exciting campaign in this particular city since there is virtually no contested contest. The closest they come is 4 people are running for the 3 at large seats.

But Issue 2 and 5, which have to do with collective bargaining, are also on the ballot here in Ohio.

I went back through the previous election data and figured out there would be about 6,400 voters in this particular campaign.

That is about a 48% turnout of all registered voters in this particular city.

It's a bedroom community that once had a large Ford plant operating in the far edge of the city.

Now, not so much of anything but retail and homes.

So I was mildly surprised, for the good, that almost 24% of the estimated vote has already voted in the election and we are still 20 days out.

The cut off for when we do a mailing is coming up by next friday. I get to run through the potential voter file, subtract the absentee or early voters from the list and then send over that file to the direct mailer.

Out of curiosity, I went back to previous elections and saw at the high end about 10% of the voting was done by absentee or early voting. Up till now, 5% to 7% would be the norm for the early voting.

I figure that staying on top of the early voting will actually save the campaign five or six hundred dollars in mailing costs.

And, we know we are getting our message out to the voter the same day that the voter gets the ballot from the Board of Elections. You can't get it any better than that.

So campaigns can be really streamlined now. I like it. I like it a lot. A lot of waste is taken out of the process.

Just thought you all might enjoy learning about some of this stuff from a campaign POV.

[Scuba]

1. We need massive turnouts to overcome the fraud. Ohio rocks!!! Love from Wisconsin.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. The work you're doing is good and solid, and it will benefit your candidate.

It's fascinating to see how campaigns work.