SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- New Hampshire voters aren't the only ones getting ready to cast their ballots in the presidential nominating contests, as absentee voting begins today in California.
There are 850,000 registered voters in New Hampshire, and the presidential candidates are going all-out to woo every single one of them right now. But there are 4 million permanent absentee voters in California, people who choose to vote by mail, and those ballots were mailed out today.
This has lead some of the campaigns mobilizing to reach those people now, in hopes that they’ll return that ballot as soon as possible.
”Twenty years ago it was somewhere around 6 to 9 percent, and in the last election cycle the number of total votes cast by absentee voters was over 40 percent. We wouldn’t be surprised if it approached 50 percent,” said Bill Simon, the chair of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign in California. “That’s a very significant number obviously, so efforts to get to absentee voters are very important.”
The Clinton and Obama campaigns are phone banking, and emailing, hoping to snag as many California primary votes as possible. And, they want to do it as soon as possible, even if it means diverting some of their resources from other states with early primaries to their California campaigns.
(MGO)
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KCBS' Doug Sovern reports
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