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KSL Newsradio's Chelsea Hedquist reportingIt's only October, but plenty of Utahns are already casting their vote.
Experts estimate that more than 20 percent of American voters will cast ballots before Election Day this year, either absentee or at early voting places. And all this early voting is having an effect on campaigns.
"There's definitely an increased emphasis on those," said Justin Daniels, field coordinator for Senate candidate Pete Ashdown. "We're obviously not running our whole campaign just based on that, but we are pushing a little harder than in campaigns i've worked on in the past."
Daniels says it has always been important to target absentee and early voters, but it's gaining importance every year. Hayden Hill, campaign manager for LaVar Christensen's campaign, agrees. "It definitely affects how we reach the voters," Hill said. "It doesn't really affect timing so much in our mailings or our messages."
That may change as Utahns begin to use early voting methods in greater numbers. In states like California and Washington, where the percentage of early and absentee voters may equal that of Election Day voters this year, Campaigns have to be careful to spread their resources over 29 or even 45 days of voting.
But not everyone is in favor of these forms of voting. "There's no question about the fact that they're popular," said Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, " but popular doesn't necessarily make them right."
Gans says early voters don't have all the information about candidates that other voters have on Election Day. But right or wrong, early voting is unlikely to go away anytime soon, and if that happens, campaigns might have to sit up and take notice.
