Early voting: Democrats show strength in key battlegrounds

Millions of voters across the country have already cast ballots in the election cycle.

By the mid-20th century, most states had adopted some form of absentee voting, although it was restricted, usually requiring specific evidence that a voter was unable to cast a ballot in person on Election Day. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that state’s Republican-led government quickly passed a package of laws created to discourage likely Democrats from voting. State election officials said Election Day polling places in at least a half-dozen counties are so damaged they may not be usable on November 8.

As of Thursday, according to the Supervisor of Elections Office, the county had 54,570 active voters and 6,759 vote-by-mail ballots had been cast. She is also favored in Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Hampshire, which combine for 59 electoral votes.

Incumbent Republican Diane Black is seeking re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives against Democrat David Kent and independent candidate David Ross.

Construction union members are doing their part to help reverse those Democratic losses, with plans to go door-to-door in Henderson on Saturday and then cast their own ballots afterward.

This surge of Democratic women participating in early voting immediately follows Trump’s comments about kissing, groping and grabbing women by their genitals; objectifying and degrading women who have accused the businessman of sexual harassment and assault; and calling Hillary Clinton “such a nasty woman” during the third presidential debate.

In 2012, 394,698 votes were cast absentee, some 20 percent of all S.C. votes cast that year.

SC residents can vote absentee if they have a reasonable excuse or if they are aged 65 or older.

About 552,000 registered voters live in the six North Carolina counties that got the brunt of the storm, with just over half of them Democrats.

For those who want to avoid big crowds at the polls, Phillips said, “Early voting has a pretty typical pattern”. That’s more than triple the 10,800 ballots returned during a similar period in 2012.

And in Ohio, Republicans’ early voting numbers haven’t dropped as much as Democrats’ have. A person must re-register to vote after moving, changing names or changing political party preference. Waiting times were two hours, officials said, and dragged longer in the afternoon.

“I encourage everyone to vote, and vote early”, said Julie Wise, Director of King County Elections. “We know there is a great deal of interest in this election, and we worked very hard to get everything back to normal, and we did in just over two hours”, Stanley said.

But it looks like it’s not only Democratic women who are turning in their ballots early. Clerks will begin mailing out the requested early ballots on October 24.