Voters in Oregon and Washington will start receiving ballots in the mail late this week. This is the first presidential election to be conducted entirely through the postal service in Washington.
But the push for “early voting” across the country is making vote-by-mail states look like late arrivals to the party. In Idaho, voters in some counties have been going to the polls since late September.
At the Kootenai County elections office in north Idaho, manager Carrie Phillips says more people are taking advantage of what’s known as “in-person absentee” voting.
“We definitely are already in the swing of things," Phillips says. "We’ve had a lot of interest as you can see. The first day that we were open for absentee, we had over 250 people vote that day. So yeah, I think a lot of people are anxious to get their vote cast.”
All voters in Idaho are required to show a state or federally issued photo ID.
The Idaho Secretary of State’s expects normal turnout between 75 and 80 percent of registered voters, according to a spokesman.
Nationwide, more than a million people have already cast their vote in the 2012 election, according to statistics kept by George Mason University.
Copyright 2012 Northwest News Network
