Will the Next Few Weeks Matter?

Amanda Walters

amanda.n.walters@gmail.com

After protests across the Middle East following the release of an anti-Islam video on YouTube, the election has come back full force this week. This week saw a hidden-camera video released by the liberal magazine Mother Jones. The video showed Mitt Romney at a fundraiser talking to a group of donors about how 47 percent of Americans “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them.”  Also this week we saw a video released of the President from 1998 talking about redistribution of wealth.

The question is how much this information, and all the info that is certain to follow, will effect the election. An article from CBS News discusses how early voting across the U.S. could effect the election. 

Absentee and early voting has already started in many of the swing states that are pegged as being the deciders of the election. In the last three presidential elections, the number of people voting early has more than doubled, from just 16 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in 2008.

And the number of people who are taking advantage of these programs is expected to be even more this election, (around one-third of the entire electorate) despite attempts to lessen early voting in Ohio and Florida.

But what does all this mean? Depending on what happens in the next 44 days, some people will have already voted on only the knowledge they have right now. This election’s October Surprise, a news event that could change the outcome of the election, might not have any visible effect because many of the ballots may already have been cast.

Even those who wait until November 6^th to vote, probably already have their vote set in stone. Only 4 percent of all voters say that they’re undecided, according to the latest CBS/New York Times Poll.

Knowing that many of the voter’s are voting early, the candidates are expected to use their energy to get those last few voters out to the polls.

Early voting in Ohio has been a contentious topic. The Obama administration has sued the state after cutting the number of days that people could vote early in-person. To find out how to vote early or absentee, click here.

When a race is as close as the presidential race might be this year, every vote, even the early ones might count.