I'm seeing a big potential problem in the polls right now.  We're talking potentially catastrophic.

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In the interest of fairness, I have to give an unqualified thumbs up to Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist.  Facing massive turnout that could cause issues on election day, he chose to extend early voting.  It's rare for somebody to unambiguously do the right thing for the right reasons, and Crist deserves praise for it.

As the election approaches, I thought I'd write a little more about the uses of the voter file in this particularly busy time.  It's a very different operation than it is in the earlier stages, when you're setting up your file.  By the time October rolls around, moving as much information into and out of the voter file as possible becomes paramount.  There are a couple of ways that files get used late in the game that don't show up earlier; today, appropos of last night's discussion, we're going to focus on early voting.