Efficient use of space in large table?

I was just wondering - I've got two large tables and I was wondering
if there is anyway to shrink them somewhat. I imagined compression for
non-indexed columns or something. Is varchar or char more efficient than
text? I'm sort of just grasping at straws for something to get the data
smaller.

Josh

A size summary
        relname         | size  |   type
------------------------+-------+----------
 sospeople              | 599MB | table
 sospeople_fn           | 71MB  | index
 sospeople_ln           | 73MB  | index
 sospeople_zip          | 73MB  | index
 votes                  | 937MB | table


                Table "sospeople"
    Attribute     |  Type   |      Modifier
------------------+---------+---------------------
 sosid            | text    | not null default ''
 countyname       | text    | not null
 firstname        | text    |
 middlename       | text    |
 lastname         | text    |
 suffix           | text    |
 homephone        | text    |
 registrationdate | text    |
 birthyear        | integer |
 status           | text    |
 precinctcode     | text    |
 housenumber      | text    |
 streetname       | text    |
 unittype         | text    |
 unit             | text    |
 address2         | text    |
 city             | text    |
 state            | text    |
 zipcode          | text    |
Indices: sospeople_fn,
         sospeople_ln,
         sospeople_zip


             Table "votes"
 Attribute  |     Type      | Modifier
------------+---------------+----------
 sosid      | character(10) |
 electionid | integer       |
 votetype   | character(1)  |



Joshua b. Jore ; http://www.greentechnologist.org