Yes We Can? Yes, You Did. Early Vote, That Is.

By Karl Klockars in News on Oct 31, 2008 7:00PM

Now that Early Voting Season has come to a close in Illinois, they've counted up the ballots, and a metric shitload of people turned out to make their mark. (Just the ballots have been counted - the actual votes won't be counted 'til election day.) ABC-7 reports that nearly half a million in Indiana, another half-million voters in Cook County, and about 285,000 in the collar counties all voted early, resulting in lines that had wait times of two hours in some cases. And we thought our ten minute wait was surprising a few weeks ago.

In addition, the Sun-Times says that if you include absentee voters, about a million people in Illinois have voted early. By our math, that's about one in every thirteen people - an amazing number when you consider that by those Quickfacts figures, about a quarter of the population of the state isn't even eligible to vote due to age.

So how many of those votes will actually be counted? Certainly more than would be if the Republicans of northwestern Indiana had their way - up until yesterday. The Post-Tribune reports they've dropped their requests to have 6,400 early votes from Gary, Hammond and East Chicago thrown out, despite the dramatics over voter registration fraud and ACORN involvement.