For a slow morning, a study on voting by mail. (I favor mail voting, including at least one state’s all-mail vote.) But this study of California voters indicates the big batch of early mail voters may miss subsequent campaign developments (candidates drop out of presidential primaries, for example) and thus not cast the most informed ballots.

Moreover, they discerned that early mail-in votes were more influenced by events taking place just prior to the ballots being sent out. “For example, Mike Huckabee, who didn’t drop out of the race, did better among vote-by-mail voters than precinct voters,” says Malhotra. “This is because the ballots were mailed out just after his huge victory in the Iowa caucuses, when he was getting a lot of media attention. By the time the California primary rolled around, however, he had lost a lot of other primaries, and his campaign had lost momentum. But it was too late for those who had already voted for him by mail.”

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