BILLINGS - On the balcony of an emptied furniture store with her three-month-old baby squirming in her lap, Susan Erickson worked an endless string of numbers into the illuminated keypad of her cell phone, searching for a combination that would conjure a voter, a promise, a victory.

It was 6:30 p.m. on a weeknight, eight days before Election Day. Downstairs at a folding table, volunteers were checking in. Many of them, like Erickson, had stopped at home after work just long enough to grab a bite to eat and feed their families in some cases. At the table they were handed detailed lists, as current as the morning newspaper, of Yellowstone County voters who hadn't voted yet.

Ask anyone in this room what's different about this presidential election in Montana and they'll tell you straight up: Election Day has gone the way of poodle skirts and penny loafers. With Montana voters going to the polls a full 30 days before the first Tuesday in November, Montana is one of the earliest-voting states in the country.

Early voting has transformed methods used by campaigners, who for $5,000 can now begin every day with freshly published lists of who has or hasn't voted. The list is generated by Montana's secretary of state, and is a byproduct of federal election reforms crafted after Florida's disastrous 2000 presidential vote.

The early vote is way up, with 155,247 eligible Montana voters having already decided by last Thursday. That's 35,000 absentee votes more than the 2006 general election with two and a half days of early voting left. In the final stretch, said Bowen Greenwood, spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Johnson Montanans were voting absentee at a rate of 10,000 ballots a day.

"It's used to be, 'Will you vote for us on Election Day?' Now it's, 'Will you go vote today?' " said Julie Eubank, Billings spokesman for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Whatever the reason

What remains to be seen is whether Montana's early surge to the polls is because of campaign efforts - like Obama's 14,000 volunteers calling and knocking on doors - or just an increased interest in voting early.

Nationally in past presidential elections, early voters have been more Republican, said Paul Gronke, of the Early Voting Center at Reed College in Oregon. Gronke has been a pundit of choice this election, appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post and several cable news networks trying to decipher the effects of early voting now that voters in 33 states can vote absentee without providing an excuse for not waiting.

In past elections he found early voters to be older, better-educated and very partisan; their minds were made up long before the first Tuesday in November.

The results of early ballots indicated they were also Republican, at least in 2004 when President George Bush held a dominant 60 percent lead over his challenger, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Voters waiting until Election Day diluted that strong absentee-voter endorsement until the final difference in the popular vote was less than 1 percent.

Gronke is cautioning journalists not to read too much into what little information is available about the early vote. Among people who already voted, Obama lead by 19 percent last week in a poll by the Pew Center for People and the Press.

"If you were to call me six months ago and ask about early voters, I had a standard speech that they tend to be older, white, better-educated, more informed.

"This year we're seeing that the Democrats have Barack up. African Americans are voting early at a pace 10 points higher then they have before. Democrat enthusiasm is up, but does that tell us that Barack Obama is going to get 65 percent of the vote? That's very unlikely."

What Gronke isn't seeing is a significant number of young people voting early. The youth vote is supposed to be strong for Obama, as it was in the spring primary elections, but those voters haven't delivered early in the general election.

Last week at the Yellowstone County Courthouse there was a line of early voters that snaked around the corner of the elections office and deep into the building's lobby. The voters looked a lot like Gronke's standard early-voter profile: predominantly white and well over age 40.

Leaving the polls, voter Eric Simmons said he did his homework on the candidates ahead of time. He couldn't understand someone being undecided right up until Nov. 4.

"I like to make a very informed decision," Simmons said, adding that voters have to stick to their values when picking a presidential candidate and not bend to the public opinion of any given day.

This was the first time Simmons and his wife, Mickie, voted early. Their son turned 18 after the deadline for receiving an absentee ballot by mail. So the family went to the polls together.

Mickie Simmons said the family received one political call in June after the primary but haven't heard this fall from the Obama campaign or the Montana Republican Party. McCain does not have an election staff in Montana. The Simmons are a cell-phone-only couple. Solicitations of any kind have been scarce.

In Montana's last general election, the early vote benefited U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who unseated incumbent Republican Conrad Burns. But the big lead quickly disappeared as the Election Day vote was blended in. Tester won by fewer than 3,000 votes out of more than 403,000 cast.

"If your goal is to figure out what the outcome is, you definitely have to wait," said Christopher Muste, a University of Montana political science professor. "We don't have enough experience with it yet."

Changing the way we vote

So many changes have been made to the way Montanans vote that the state is still experiencing firsts in this election. This the first presidential election in which Montanans can register to vote right through Election Day. In 2006, a flood of late registrations delayed the closing of polls by more than three hours in some counties that allowed anyone in line before the normal 8 p.m. poll closure to cast a ballot.

The biggest change, though, is the availability of fresh election data letting campaigns know exactly who has already voted and who has registered to vote early. Campaigns buy the data from the secretary of state for $5,000.

The information can be broken down by precinct, compared with lists of known supporters, and used to create a very accurate picture of who candidates need to get to the voting booth in order to win.

The information was available in 2006, but this is the first presidential election since the database's creation. It allows campaigns to focus their efforts on voters still up for grabs, as well as track the performance of voters they've registered.

However, the demand for money - and, more importantly, manpower - can keep a campaign from using the new data to its fullest, said Craig Wilson, political science professor at Montana State University-Billings.

"It really comes down to do you have the resources to get into it," Wilson said. "I think it means they have to run longer final campaigns. It makes 72-hour campaigning less important because of all those people who have already voted."

Newly registered voters traditionally are less than reliable, but with a month to get them to the polls and daily updates on their behavior, campaigns are betting newbies can be transformed into likely voters.

Newly registered voters have been a key component to the Obama campaign. Since January, more than 53,000 voters have been added to the rolls. Anecdotally, county elections officers across the state say Democrats are responsible for most of those new registrants.

Help America Vote Act

The law that made this type of voter-tracking possible was the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act. HAVA, as the act is known, was the congressional response to the 2000 presidential vote fiasco. Its message was clear: No more dimpled chads, ballot double-dipping or votes from the graveyard. And no turning voters away because of tedious registration questions.

States responded by requiring voters to produce better identification, a driver's license being the norm in Montana. That information produced a database that counties could check to make sure voters weren't casting ballots in two different communities or voting absentee, then showing up in person on Election Day to vote again. It's that database that campaigns now buy.

"The biggest impact of HAVA is the creation of statewide voter-registration databases," Gronke said. "It used to be available only by county and you may have (had) to go county by county every single day."

Some states give the information away for free either by request or by posting on the state Web sites, Gronke said. Montana's rate of $5,000 for an election cycle is on the expensive side and puts the information off-limits to small campaigns, individuals and organizations, though the price isn't the most expensive; Alaska was charging $250,000 for its information until recently, Gronke said. And there are other disadvantages to the new era of early voting. David Parker, a Montana State University political science professor, said challengers will ultimately be disadvantaged by early voting and rising campaign costs. Early voting shortens the time challengers have to get their names out and then follow up with their political message.

"It definitely puts a premium on organization and neighborhood organization. Old-style politics plus all the bells and whistles of technology," Parker said. "The other thing early voting does is prevent the possibility of an October surprise affecting the campaign.

"I personally don't vote early. I like going to the polls on Election Day. I want to be prepared for an October surprise."