More than half of California voters voted by mail this year and it's changing elections

I'm a big fan of voting by mail. I spend more time on my ballot since I've been voting by mail (9 years now), researching and slowly filling in my choices. And once I turn it in, the campaigns don't have to use resources to make sure I turn out and can focus on voters who haven't yet.

Mail ballots alter California campaigns
Marisa Lagos
Published 10:27 p.m., Saturday, September 15, 2012

Election day is Nov. 6 this year, but for many of the growing number of Californians who prefer to weigh in by mail, voting will actually occur sometime in October.
The portion of California voters who cast ballots by mail in the 2008 presidential election topped 41 percent, up from 17 percent in 1992. The trend is drastically changing the political landscape in the Golden State, from the way candidates and their consultants run campaigns to when races are actually decided.
With voters able to weigh in up to 29 days before election day, and close races sometimes taking weeks to sort out, the days of last-minute campaign pushes, a flood of late direct mail and "October surprises" - as well as election night results - may be ending, some experts say.
The biggest increase in vote-by-mail ballots has occurred over the last 20 years, from the 17 percent in 1992 to 24 percent in 2000. In 2008, just over 41 percent of voters passed up polling places to vote at home.
More recently, in the June primary, 65 percent of voters cast ballots by mail, state records show.

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Ace Smith, a longtime Democratic strategist, said early voting is "fundamentally changing the way campaigns are run," because "we now have 29 different election days." He called it a coup for grassroots campaigns.
"The advantage of it is that it's tremendously good for democracy. Instead of having to build a huge organization and army and go be in the field for one day, one event, we now have a much broader, longer opportunity to talk to people for a longer period of time," said Smith, who is working on several ballot measures this year.
"As people vote, we can cross them off our list and move on to the next people, instead of an old-fashioned blitz at the end," he said.

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"A lot of people like to drop their ballots off at a polling place after they had them at home," she said. "It's fine, but it means that at the end of the night we have a giant stack of ballots, a huge amount of paper to process."
While Korp said he usually votes about a week after receiving his ballot - and never waits until the last minute - Jennifer Siverts-McGrady, a San Diego County lawyer who has voted by mail for five years, said she always holds on to her ballot until the last minute, though she usually fills it out earlier.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Mail-ballots-alter-California-campaigns-3869002.php#ixzz26ebGoKzz