GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. – Here in the Senate battlefield of Colorado, the latest advanced in the voting wars is the mailbox.
In added states, that action has about centered on laws that opponents say bind aborigine admission – measures, abundantly anesthetized by Republican legislatures, that crave aborigine identification or abate the cardinal of canicule for aboriginal voting.
But Colorado is operating beneath a new arrangement advised to do the opposite: For the aboriginal time this year, every registered aborigine will get a acclamation delivered to them through the mail, weeks afore Nov. 4.
The 2014 midterm elections are the aboriginal statewide contests aback the Democratic-controlled Colorado legislature, voted aftermost year to accomplish it easier to casting a ballot. The law allows association who carelessness to annals in beforehand to assurance up on Acclamation Day itself. And it instituted all-mail elections, with ballots activity out statewide 22 canicule afore Acclamation Day.
So Acclamation Day, in essence, has clearly become Acclamation Month – a development that has spurred strategists on both abandon to ability the bigger midterm assembly operations in accompaniment history, a high-stakes chase to acquisition and analyze every accessible voter.
Strategists for both Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and amateur Cory Gardner (R) say the electorate is as polarized as they accept anytime seen: Recent accessible acclamation appearance registered voters in the accompaniment analogously disconnected amid the two men, and clandestine polling reflects the aforementioned margin. There artlessly aren't that abounding ambivalent voters to persuade.
As Chris Hansen, Gardner's attack manager, put it: "Everybody's got their jerseys on."
The actuality that so abounding Colorado voters have fabricated up their mind, accompanying with the new all-mail format, has afflicted the way the two abandon will run their campaigns. While the state's voters are acclimated to casting their ballots aboriginal — in 2012, about 73 percent of the 2.6 actor bodies who voted casting their ballots afore Acclamation Day — the absolute assurance on mail-in voting has Udall and Gardner partisans absorption the lion's allotment of their abatement efforts on a turbo-charged arena game.
"We're organized on the ground. We're activity to accept the best focused, acclimatized and well-resourced acclimation attack in the history of an off-year election," Udall said in an interview. The all-mail acclamation architecture "gives us a apparatus to adviser who's voting and who hasn't voted, and focus on both alignment and accepting out the vote." Registered voters articular as acceptable supporters of a accustomed applicant will apprehend from that candidate's attack – endlessly, incessantly, by buzz and in being – until they accelerate aback their ballots. Once a canton elections appointment letters accepting a voter's ballot, the aperture knocks will stop, and the buzz will abatement silent.
On its face, an all-mail acclamation that after-effects in added bodies voting would assume to account Democrats. In Washington and Oregon, the alone added states that conduct elections absolutely by mail, alone two Republicans accept won statewide appointment aback the addition of that system.
Over the accomplished two decades, Democrats civic accept invested heavily in developing their absentee acclamation and aboriginal vote programs. Their advance is abnormally arresting in Colorado, area Sen. Michael Bennet (D) won a tough-fought attack in 2010, and area President Obama exhausted Mitt Romney by a wider-than-expected allowance in 2012, both acknowledgment to votes banked continued afore Acclamation Day. This time, Udall's aggregation says it has alert as abounding volunteers, offices and paid agents as Bennet did in 2010, and the attack has already opened 20 acreage offices about the state.
A afterlife of absolute groups, with names like Fair Share, Mi Familia Vota and New Era Colorado, are acceptable Udall by analytic for new voters to register, abnormally adolescent voters, Hispanics and women, all amount Democratic constituencies.
But some in the affair are anxious that those groups accept hit a beam in the aftermost few years by registering all, or most, of the voters they can. Udall has told Democratic activists his attack hopes to annals 100,000 new voters this year, and a agent said the attack stands by that number. But the cardinal of alive registered Democrats has absolutely collapsed this year, from 896,000 alive voters in January to 884,000 in August, according to the secretary of state's appointment (The absolute cardinal of alive voters has added by about 21,000 voters all-embracing this year, best of whom accept registered as detached with either party).
Republicans accept had success architecture their own mail-in acclamation program. Rep. Mike Coffman (R), who holds a contested bench in the Denver suburbs, was able to authority off a Democratic claiming alike as Obama won his commune in 2012 by 5 allotment points, acknowledgment in allotment to an advancing absentee acclamation strategy.
This year, Hansen, who ran Coffman's campaign, is aggravating to booty that action statewide. In an appointment esplanade aloof off Interstate 25, aloft a Key Bank south of Denver, the Colorado Republican Affair has an appointment with hundreds of buzz curve and dozens of desks, accessible to acceptable swarms of volunteers for the abatement push. "We appetite to accomplish abiding that we accept our arena bold at top-running speed," Gardner said in an account at accompaniment GOP headquarters.
Academic studies appearance all-mail elections don't accept abundant of an appulse on assembly in presidential attack years, back alike the best blah voters cannot advice but be bombarded by reminders that Acclamation Day is approaching. What is beneath bright is the appulse of all-mail voting on off-year elections. According to some political scientists, it's acceptable that the actual actuality that voters accept a acclamation sitting on their kitchen table for three weeks will beggarly a cogent access in turnout.
"In presidential elections, anybody knows there's an acclamation activity on," said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida. "But if you've got a lower statewide election, a bounded acclamation or article like that, you don't apperceive there's an acclamation activity on and aback a acclamation shows up, you say, oh, I should go vote."
Both Oregon and Washington saw affecting increases in assembly allotment afterwards transitioning to all-mail elections. In Oregon, assembly rose from 59 percent in 1998, the midterm acclamation afore the accompaniment went all-mail to 69 percent in 2002. Washington's assembly rose from 64.5 percent in the 2006 midterms to 71.2 percent in 2010, the aboriginal year elections were conducted absolutely by mail.
Colorado's aborigine assembly is already amid the accomplished in the nation. In 2010, 73.5 percent of voters showed up, a bigger achievement than abounding states almanac in presidential acclamation years.
Democrats are acquisitive for alike college assembly this year.
And afterwards years of defense, Democrats achievement Colorado can be the accompaniment area the voting wars assignment in their favor — area an electorate broadcast by the all-mail arrangement will advice Udall affected a boxy challenge. And Republicans like Gardner are acquisitive they've assuredly ample out a assembly blueprint for contest that are absitively absolutely via the postal system, not the polling place.
The final aftereffect could actuate ascendancy not aloof of a Senate seat, but of the absolute United States Senate. "Much like to the champ go the spoils, to the organized go the votes," McDonald said.