Election Day may be Nov. 5. But many Brevard County voters will have cast their ballots weeks before then.
As more and more people vote early by mail, political candidates are adopting a strategy of sending out mailers, calling voters and doing their advertising many weeks before Election Day.
In the Aug. 20 local primary elections this year, only about 37% of voters who cast ballots did so in person on Election Day. In comparison, 41% cast ballots via mail, and 22% participated in eight days of in-person early voting.
“People who vote by mail tend to vote quickly” after receiving their ballots in the mail, Brevard Democratic Executive Committee Chair Pamela Castellana said. For the Aug. 20 primary, for example, many returned their ballots as early as mid- to late-July.
That means “the intensity of the campaign schedule starts earlier,” said Florida Rep. Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, who is seeking his fourth two-year term in the Florida House of Representatives.
No longer can candidates wait until the last minute to make their contacts with voters, because most of the votes already will have been cast.
“It completely changes your get-out-the-vote operation,” Sirois said, with he and other candidates carefully tracking the updated lists of voters who have requested a mail ballot to see if they have voted. Candidates receive such lists from the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Office.
“You have to stay on top of your data to make sure you’re talking to people who have not voted yet,” Sirois said. Otherwise, it’s “a waste of resources” to mail or otherwise contact voters who already have voted.
Vote-by-mail ballot milestone date
Winners and losers in Brevard primary: Election 2024: Brevard Primary results
Republican congressional candidate Mike Haridopolos of Indian Harbour Beach ― who has more than two decades of experience on the campaign trail as a candidate and a campaign adviser ― said a key milestone date is the sending out of vote-by-mail ballots by the Supervisor of Elections Office. In Brevard County, that mailing is scheduled for Oct. 3. Ballots for voters in the military stationed outside of Brevard and voters who live overseas were going out even earlier, on Sept. 20. In addition, 13 days of in-person early voting will run from Oct. 21 through Nov. 2 at 10 sites throughout Brevard.
“As a candidate, you want to be defined as best you can before absentee ballot mailings go out,” said Haridopolos, who served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000 to 2003 and in the Florida Senate from 2003 to 2012, including serving as president of the Senate from 2010 to 2012.
At the minimum, that would be with an introductory campaign mailing, according to Haridopolos, who also has consulted on dozens of other campaigns for Republican candidates. Then, candidates with the financial resources to do so, would send out one or two follow-up mailers relatively early in the process.
Haridopolos said candidates who are organized and carefully track the status of vote-by-mail ballots have the advantage of “not wasting resources to people who already have voted.”
“The more sophisticated an operation you have, the better,” Haridopolos said.
Late start puts candidates ‘behind the eight-ball’
Yvonne Minus, a Democratic candidate this year for Brevard County Commission in District 3, who ran two successful campaigns Melbourne City Council in 2016 and 2020, agrees on the importance of getting an early jump on campaigning.
“I’ll be like the Brightline train coming through, definitely on overdrive,” Minus said, adding that if you wait too long, “you are behind the eight-ball.”
Voter turnout for the Aug. 20 primary was just under 25%, a figure Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic said he was “a little bit disappointed” with.
But he noted that voters who are on the list to receive a mail ballot “are more inclined to return them,” with about 57% of the voters who received a mail ballot for the primary actually casting that ballot. Many send back their filled-out mail ballots within a few days of receiving them.
So candidate often focus on contacting voters who requested vote-by-mail ballots, such as timing their own mailings with the days just before those voters receive the mail ballots.
Cocoa Mayor Mike Blake has seen this firsthand. Blake was first elected to the Cocoa City Council as a councilman in 1998, and has served off and on as a councilman or mayor since then. Blake is seeking reelection as mayor this year. He also ran unsuccessfully as Democrat against Sirois for a Florida House seat in 2018.
Blake said election strategies have had to change over time, because of voters showing up earlier and earlier, but the overall concepts have stayed the same.
“The style of reaching your constituents has changed immensely,” he said. “You find yourself starting your campaign earlier and earlier each time.”
Despite the shifting time frame of campaign season, Blake said the core philosophy is the same ― reaching voters where they are.
“You always have to adapt and modify to the voters,” Blake said. “It’s not about you as the candidate. It’s your job to orient your campaign around their schedule.”
Each election cycle, candidates like Blake receive a list of those voters who receive mail-in ballots. That serves as a cue to begin reaching out, Blake said.
“You rise to the occasion. You place your name on the ballot, and ask people to support you. So it’s on you to modify what you’re doing to cater to the voters,” he added.
Shift in voting trends
Voting trends have changed significantly in the last decade in Brevard.
In the 2014 general election, more than 52% of voters cast their ballots at a polling place on Election Day.
By the 2022 general election, though, fewer than 39% did.
Over the years, former President Donald Trump has railed against mail-in ballots, while Democrats have urged voters to cast their ballots early.
Those philosophies have been reflected at the polls.
In the 2022 general election, some 70% of Democrats voted early vs. 58% of Republicans.
Castellana said the Democratic Party places a premium on using software to closely track on a daily basis who cast ballots to determine which voters to contact by phone or in person to remind them to vote.
The local Republican Party has adopted a similar strategy.
“We are always making sure to target people, based on whether they received mail-in ballots,” Brevard Republican Executive Committee Chair Rick Lacey said. “We can even see if they haven’t mailed in their ballot yet, and we send them texts or even direct phone calls, based on that.”
Targeting voters begins much earlier in the election season than it used to, Lacey said. In some ways, it requires more work, but it also enables strategists to do smarter, more targeted work.
Lacey said early-voting data ensures his organization can reach those voters in the specific ways and at specific times to ensure they make it to the polls.
In the past, each election was seen as one singular event, Lacey said. Now, that has changed.
“It’s more work now, because you have to really look at every election as three different stages,” Lacey said. “We’ve adapted over the years to those strategies to direct our attention to each type of voter. As long as they vote, that’s all we care about.”
Sirois ‘more of a traditionalist’ about Election Day
But not everyone is thrilled by this trend of increased voters casting ballots by mail.
“I’m more of a traditionalist,” Sirois said, adding that he would prefer to see vote-by-mail ballots available only to people who cannot physically make it to a polling place on Election Day or during in-person early voting ― “with identification in hand.”
“I’m just a little bit skeptical of 40 days-plus of voting,” Sirois said.
But Sirois added that, with vote-by-mail so entrenched in the voting rules, he doesn’t expect his idea of restricting voting by mail to gain traction.
Haridopolos said an advantage of most people voting early is that candidates can better combat the impacts of negative ― and sometimes misleading or false — 11th-hour hit pieces that their opponents send voters by mail, text or robocalls. Such tactics done in the final days of a campaign will have minimal impact because most people will have voted already. And, if they are done earlier in the campaign, the aggrieved candidate will have enough time to respond to clear up the allegations.
Dave Berman is business editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Berman at dberman@floridatoday.com, on X at @bydaveberman and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dave.berman.54
Tyler Vazquez is the North Brevard and Brevard County government watchdog reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Vazquez at 321-480-0854 or tvazquez@floridatoday.com
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Publish date : 2024-09-21 22:02:00
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