I noticed this on the Rachel Maddow show ticker, and then immediately rushed to check it out.
Colorado absolutely COULD be one of the crucial states. FiveThirtyEight.com has it as the number 1 "Tipping Point State" with it being crucial to a win either way in 45% of cases.
The Denver Post reported today, regarding the overwhelming numbers of mail-in ballots (emphasis mine):
Most county clerks in the big Front Range counties said they expect to go into Election Day "clean," meaning the only votes left to count will be those cast Tuesday. But that has not stopped some clerks from casting a wary eye at the number of mail-in ballots still to be returned. Because mail-in ballots take longer to count than those cast at the polls, a number of clerks think it could be well into Wednesday before they have final results.
"It isn't instantaneous,"
Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty said of the multistep verification and counting process that mail-in ballots must undergo. "It's a lot of work. So we're not going to be done by 1 or 2 in the morning."
If Colorado is too close to call, considering these significant number of mail-in ballots and the EV race is within 9, then we could be in for a long night.
I don't think its likely, but I am unsurprised based on what I've heard personally about the criminally tardy mail-in ballot distribution. Many voters received the very long ballot either Wednesday or Thursday of last week and the suggested last day to mail-it was Friday. It seems as though many people did mail it at the last moment, and thus there is quite a backlog.
Colorado is a bit of an electoral anomaly. Its volunteers prefer to canvas rather than call on the phone (this has been mentioned specifically on Obama conference calls) and they prefer to vote by mail-in ballot rather than walk to a poll.
The early vote turnout is 74% of the 2004 TOTAL turnout, and mail-ins account for 77% of early turnout. This means that 2008 mail-ins, thus far have accounted for 56% of 2004 total turnout.
The Denver Post continues:
Nearly 70 percent of the record number of mail-in ballots sent to voters this year have been returned.
But that still leaves more than a half-million mail-in ballots. Because only a handful of counties offered weekend drop-off for mail-in ballots, most of those will probably pour into county offices today and Election Day.
This election is clearly testing the new voter identification systems and widespread early voting procedures to a near-straining point.
Oregon uses 100% mail-in ballots and does this perfectly.
Colorado and many other states clearly need to improve their voting mechanisms, and we should find the best and make them standard. A patchwork of success and failure by states, in my opinion, is a disgrace in the U.S.A.
On another note, Olbermann's "worst person in the world", Shirley Nagel partisan scrooge of Halloween, deserves some karmic payback. I feel like writing her a nasty letter.