Voting in Red States, Voting in Blue States: Absentee Voting, Political Culture, and State-Level Electoral Competitiveness.

Over the past decade, there has been much talk in the media about 'red' and 'blue' states; states that are electorally uncompetitive in presidential elections. Even with recent efforts to create national standards for voting machinery and personnel, states still have variations in their voting patterns. This paper seeks to determine what role this electoral competitiveness or uncompetitiveness, as the case may be, plays in making a state's voters choose to vote absentee. Using state by state election data from the 2000, 2004. amd 2008 presidential elections, this paper seeks to determine what role electoral competition, the relative strengths of the two major parties in each of the fifty states, and the states' political culture contribute in the variation in states' numbers of absentee voters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]