Early voting by mail, despite its drawbacks (easier fraud, voters not becoming fully informed before selecting candidates, the inability to correct a ballot if it has been filled out with any error or omission, and so on), is growing exponentially and will likely continue to do so. Although Super Tuesday is still five days away, voters already are casting ballots by mail and/or in person in nine of the twenty-two states holding nominating contests on February 5. California election officials estimate that more than half of voters may vote by mail.

For the important Republican Florida contest in Florida last Tuesday and the upcoming California Democratic and Republican primaries, candidates on both sides had taken early voting into account when devising their campaign strategies. Most intriguing is that, with sufficient money and expertise, candidates can track who has already voted early in person or by absentee ballot and can redirect their campaign efforts accordingly. Although tracking capabilities vary from state to state, candidates usually can purchase absentee ballot data from the state or the county (in Florida, early in-person returns are freely available to anyone, and early absentee reports are free to candidates). This tracking also includes information on who has requested an absentee ballot, leading at least the Obama and Clinton campaigns to time the arrival of direct mail pieces so that they hit the mailbox at the same time as the absentee ballot form.

Some experts argue that, in the future, early in-person and absentee ballot data should be accessible to all of the candidates, voter mobilization groups, and the parties, perhaps through the Web sites of the secretaries of state. Paul Gronke of electionline.org and Reed College has been doing extensive research on this and has been advocating this type of transparency for a long time. The reason is clear: as Gronke’s research has already shown, we know that voting reforms such as expanded use of absentee ballots only lead to an increase in voter participation when they are coupled with candidate and party outreach efforts. Making information on early voting would, presumably, make get-out-the-vote efforts easier and more efficient. As an additional benefit, early access to this information would lower campaign costs.

There already are obvious and easy ways to encourage voters, through the Internet, to vote by mail, such as simply placing prompts on campaign homepages. But not all of the candidates have fully capitalized on this. Although most of the candidates have some form of prompt on their homepages, the degree of accessibility varies widely. Hillary Clinton has an online absentee ballot application request form on her California Web site. By filling out contact information and choosing either permanent or single election absentee status, voters will receive an absentee ballot application. On his California homepage, John Edwards had information on early and absentee voting deadlines and a link to download a mail-in absentee ballot application.

In Florida, Giuliani prompted supporters to choose their county, and then provided links to the counties’ online ballot request forms, where available. On their Florida pages, Mike Huckabee and John McCain both provided information on early and absentee voting as well as links to Florida’s Election Division Web site containing contact info for all of the counties, but they had no direct links to online or downloadable ballot request forms. Among Republicans in California, only McCain has early voting deadline information on his California page as well as links to the California Secretary of State’s office to request a ballot.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are the only two candidates who don’t seem to encourage early or absentee voting on their Web sites at all. According to CBS News, Obama supporters in Florida created early voting prompts on their my.barackobama.com Web sites, but those pages were only open to other members of that Web site.

In Florida, the state Democratic Party also was active in its encouragement of early voting. Prominently featured on the party’s Web site homepage is CreateChange08, which is a program they established to promote mail-in voting. In addition to offering individuals the opportunity to sign up to receive mail-in ballots for elections through 2010, it also encourages those who sign up to convince their friends and family to sign up for mail-in ballots.

Early vote by mail is a train that just continues to pick up speed, given the perception of its convenience, increased publicity about problems at the polls, and the push in favor of it by some election administrators, advocacy groups, and campaigns. One issue this trend raises is the demographic skew of absentee balloting: voters who choose this method are generally more likely to be white, more educated, and wealthier. Given the racial and ethnic digital divide in Internet use and access, does the use of the Internet to prod people to vote absentee exacerbate this bias?

Campaigns, parties, and voter mobilization organizations will continue to use new tactics to target these early voters through innovative means. Perhaps the next step will be mass e-mail campaigns with Web links to absentee ballot request forms. Or maybe it will be the use of text messaging, which, since there is less of a technology gap with respect to cell phones than Internet usage, could ameliorate the skewing effects. No doubt the intersection of the rise of the early voting and new media phenomena will likely lead campaigns and voters in directions we have not yet even anticipated.

Tova Andrea Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.