A few days later, I got a mailer from Grijalva's opponent, Medina, asking me if I wanted to order an absentee ballot. Guess he's working from an old list. Early voting has become a vital and unpredictable element of modern political campaign. For the last 30 days, you have an election every day going on. It becomes much, much more time-consuming and expensive to fight 30 elections than to fight one or two.
Early voting is a relatively new phenomenon in campaign dynamics.
In 1991, the Arizona Legislature loosened the absentee ballot rules, hoping to boost turnout. Since then, early voting has been on the rise. In 1998, that number jumped to more than 26 percent, with 52,008 early votes out of 195,580 ballots cast. Early voting in primaries has likewise increased. This year, the number will be even higher.