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From WP:

Election Day is more than six weeks away, but by Nov. 6 tens of millions of Americans — perhaps as many as 40 percent of all voters — will have cast their ballots in the presidential race and other contests.

The robust growth in early voting, either by mailed absentee ballot or in person, has made it a critical element in the ground-game strategies of both major presidential campaigns. The traditional get-out-the vote push, once focused on a the final hours of a contest, has become an elaborate 45-day operation.

This year’s early balloting is underway, and by mid-to-late October it could yield indicators of the outcome. In North Carolina, nearly 3,000 ballots already have been returned by mail. On Friday, voters in South Dakota and Idaho began casting ballots in person.

Over the next month, the District and 34 states (including Maryland) will allow voters to cast early ballots without providing a reason — “no-excuse” voting. Virginia law requires that voters meet at least one of more than a dozen criteria, including anticipated absence on Election Day, disability, pregnancy or a lengthy commute to work.

Early votes are expected to make up the majority of ballots cast in battlegrounds such as Florida, North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado, where as many as 80 percent of all voters may be early. Two states, Oregon and Washington, conduct elections exclusively by mail, sending ballots to all registered voters about three weeks before the election.

The volume of pre-Election Day activity is expected to surpass 2008, when about 33 percent of 131 million votes cast in the presidential contest were early. That is nearly double the 15 percent who voted early in 2000.

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