States move to Cut early Voting Days

More than a half dozen states have passed laws to reduce early voting, setting up a clash with civil rights groups and Democrats who claim the rules could disenfranchise minority voters in the 2012 elections.

Among the states with new restrictions: Wisconsin and Florida, presidential swing states that are key battlegrounds in the fight for control of the Senate, narrowly held by the Democrats.

In Florida, nearly 3.3 million Democrats cast in-person ballots before Election Day in the 2008 contest that swept President Obama into power. By contrast, 810,666 Florida Republicans participated in the in-person early voting that year, according to the Florida secretary of State's office. Obama won the state by 3 percentage points.

In five other states - Georgia, Maine, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia - this year approved laws shortening early voting, according to the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures. With the exeption of West Virginia, Republicans control the governor's offices and legislatures in those states.

The Republican-controlled Legislature in another key presidential battleground state, North Carolina, plans to revisit a proposal next year to reduce early voting voting from 16 days to 10. North Carolina Rep. Bert Jones said he sponsored the bill to cut the state's early voting by six days to reduce the influence of political money in state and local elections. "The longer voting period gives that much more of an advantage to candidates who have more money to spend." said Jones, a Republican. "Ten voting days is still a generous amount of time." Opponents say early voting restrictions, along with new laws in six states requiring photo identification at the polls, will thwart traditionally Democratic voters, including college students, African Americans, and Latinos.

Republicans think their path to victory is through limiting eligible voters'access to the polls." said Obama campaign spokesman Ben MaBolt. "Our goal is to maximize participation." The Obama campaign scored a very key victory last week when Ohio officials certified that the law's opponents had collected enough signatures to get a repeal petition on the November ballot. That delays the implentation of the law.

Obama's political operation, Organizing for America, helped run the petition drive, which collected nearly half a million signatures. Efforts are underway in other states to combat new voting restrictions, campaign officials said. Early voting has surged in recent years. More than a dozen states launched or expanded early voting programs from 2001 through 2010, according to data compiled by Jennie Bowser of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Overall, 34% of voters in the 2008 general election cast ballots before Election Day, up from 22.2% four years earlier, according to data from the Associated Press and Edison Research. Michael McDonald, an elections expert at Virginia's George Mason University, said it's too soon to tell whether the new laws will lower turnout. The changes may lead to longer lines on Election Day, he said. But, "in a high-profile presidential election, people are entusiastic about voting and will often overcome the barriers put in their way.