From microwave popcorn to digital grocery shopping to telemedicine, our citizens worship time and the technology that saves time. But in Mississippi and a few other states, we reject the notion of our obsession with time and convenience when it comes to voting.
Efforts to modernize Mississippi's election and voting laws through changes that include early voting provisions have failed time and time again. Critics of early voting have a reliable script – it creates low information voters, it doesn't eliminate voter fraud, and it negates the concept of poll watchers.
In 2014, two Northwestern law professors refined their criticism: "For all its conveniences, early voting threatens the basic nature of citizen choice in democratic, republican government. In elections, candidates make competing appeals to the people and provide them with the information necessary to choose. Citizens also engage with one another, debating and deliberating about the best options for the country. Especially in an age of so many nonpolitical distractions, it is important to preserve the space of a general election campaign — from the early kickoff rallies to the last debates in October — to allow voters to think through, together, the serious issues that face the nation."
But proponents point to convenience, flexibility, increased access, and public health to support the early voting concept. Here's what the National Conference of State Legislatures has to say about early voting:
More than two-thirds of the states - 39, plus the District of Columbia - offer some early voting. Early voting allows voters to visit an election official's office or, in some states, other satellite voting locations, and cast a vote in person without offering an excuse for why the voter is unable to vote on Election Day. Delaware recently enacted early voting laws, but they won't become effective until 2022.
Some states also allow voters to fill out and cast their absentee ballot in person at the official elections office or at a satellite location rather than returning through the mail. This is often referred to as in-person absentee voting. Satellite voting locations vary by state and may include other county and state offices (besides the election official's office), grocery stores, shopping malls, schools, libraries, and other locations.
In Mississippi, the only "early" votes are absentee ballots that are available beginning 45 days before an election, but only for specific excused reasons including the voters knowing that they'll be out of their home county on election day or disability or voters past age 65. College students and members of the armed forces can often vote absentee ballots.
Nine states, Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, do not offer pre-Election Day in-person voting options.
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina have "no excuse" early voting. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina have "no excuse" absentee ballots. Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi have "excuse" driven absentee ballots, but no other early voting.
Tennessee and Texas have "no excuse" early voting but require excuses for absentee ballots. In other words, Mississippi is outside the mainstream of most states in terms of early voting. And in a society that worships time, in a sense, there can be no real reason for that fact beyond partisan considerations, fears, or strategies.
But opponents of early voting make two compelling arguments – first that traditional polling place voting is infrequent and a citizen’s duty that is worthy of going to the trouble to vote. Second, those same opponents quote the late British Labor Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson: “A week is a long time in politics.”
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Sid Salter: Should Voting be Convenient?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
25 comments:
If the law required that employers allow their employees to take time away from work to vote there would be a sudden awakening to the idea of mail in ballots and on line voting.
One of the problems in our world today is ease of everything. So much so that many of our basics are taken for granted. Voting should certainly not be difficult, and for sure we don't want to "disenfranchise" anyone, but American citizens should have to put forth effort, rearrange a schedule, postpone something in order for everyone to show up at the polls all on the same day to cast a ballot. With our nation polarized as never before, voter fraud will be a demon with which to deal.
I'm all for opening the polls for a week or even two weeks to allow for more convenient in-person voting. However, I am against the expansion of mail in voting. There is too much chance of undue influence being placed on some of the voters. I don't want someone to fill out their parents', grandparents', or even children's ballots and say "here, sign this". Even worse would be an activist organization having a "voter day" in a nursing home where they walk the residents through exactly who they should vote for.
The results of the election should reflect the independent vote of every individual, and the only way to ensure that is to insist on private, in-person voting.
It’s easy, republicans would rather sacrifice lives than to have more people vote. If more people vote, they become irrelevant. If they become irrelevant, they stop getting money they don’t deserve.
I will support the idea that voting should be an inconvenient act of civic duty when election day becomes a national holiday, all but essential businesses are required to close, and all essential workers get another day off to vote. Or should this civic inconvenience only fall on the shoulders of working people?
Voting is a basic RIGHT afforded to all American citizens, and the government should be invested in making voting as convenient as possible. I would support making National Election Day a Federal holiday if that is what it would take to ease the burden of having to fit in-person voting with a job schedule. Or add a week for early voting. And mail-in voting is not as “fraudulent” and “corrupt” as Retrumplicans want us to think it is. After all, our President doesn't have a problem with it in Florida.
I wish we could vote on Saturdays.
We've forgotten that voting used to be easier.
Our populations were much smaller and in the beginning ,only male property owners could vote. So they basically had a gathering in a convenient location and everybody knew everybody.
It was still pretty easy to vote when we were more rural. Then too, everyone knew every one and voting places were convenient.
Cities have always had the largest challenges and the greatest opportunities to mess things up.
Urban is now 72-80% of us depending on region and inconvenience is a political tool. Adding gerrymandering and too few precincts for too many people, whether you want to admit it or not, many voters are disenfranchised and their vote become diluted.
Not knowing how politicians play their games and how voting works where YOU live is important.
More important still is that States control the voting process. Those of you arguing for NO mail in ballot ( weirdly thinking also that it's okay to do absentee as if they aren't mailed) is dangerous. What they are is more time consuming and you should be allow to start the process of counting sooner with zero announcement of the count and maximum oversight.
Oregon is in no danger of hacking as their vote has been all mail in for some time.
Read your State law on registering and voting. Know how it works. Best stay out of the business of other States as one size does not fit all. And, the closer you are to the rules of voting, the better chance you have of making sure the scoundrels can't operate in secret.
Has Absentee voting open up yet.
I going that's my early voting remedy.
My grandmother will send in her vote from the grave.
Last week, a cat received a mail in ballot.
In Pennsylvania, the signature on the mail in ballot does not have to match the signature on the voter registration.
The allowance of mail in voting will permit the destruction of this republic.
More Robert St. John.
Less Sid.
Heck, bring back Tulp. At least he was coherent.
Doesn't matter much anymore, they're all crooked as shit.
Voting is such an important right and duty that all citizens who are legally eligible and registered to vote should GO TO THE POLLS and vote. Its not too much to ask of us as American citizens. Plus, it cuts down on voter fraud. The voter fraud in the mail-in voting states will be an eye-opener (and potentially election changer) come November 3.
Hey 11:58, how's that kook-aid taste?
Mail-in voting for all has been used in several western states for a while now. Yet they seem to be doing fine with minimal evidence of voter fraud.
To reiterate from an earlier comment on mail in voting, if someone's cat received a ballot, their owner registered them to vote and committed voter fraud. Whoever has that cat's ballot in their hand should be arrested and charged. Similarly, if someone's grandmother votes from her grave, whoever sent in her ballot committed voter fraud and should be arrested and charged.
And the destruction of the republic is already complete. America's democracy is failing in a very similar fashion to other democracies that were toppled by autocrats. The 2020 election has been totally undermined before a single vote has been cast and people are so confused that whichever side loses will never accept the results.
To make matters worse (and add insult to injury, really), this whole mail-in voting controversy is a distraction that everyone is playing into. While y'all sit here and debate whether mail in voting is rife for fraud, other countries are actively hacking and exploiting state election systems. That means they will have access to your in-person votes and possibly even your actual voting machine. So, you may think you're voting for Trump (or Biden), but your vote goes to whichever candidate that country wants it to go to.
This isn't the time to be a Luddite. You have to understand that, as technology progressed and things started being done electronically, we exposed ourselves to these dangers before we implemented sufficient protections. It's similar to the late 90s or early 00s when people didn't have antivirus software and you'd come home one day to porn screensavers, porn desktop backgrounds, and a million pop up ads all because your kid looked at one porn site with his friends that weekend. If you think consumer data from major international banks whose business is to keep that information safe can be hacked and decrypted but Mississippi's voter rolls are safe, then you're going to be the one coming home to a computer with anal sex scenes depicted on your screensavers and desktops.
My only concern about mail in voting comes from reports you see every now and then that "City X has 8,000 residents and 8,500 registered voters." When they mail out the ballots, do the just send them out based on the current list? If I get a ballot for me and for the person who lived here before me, what's stopping me from filling them both out?
"More Robert St. John.
Less Sid.
Heck, bring back Tulp. At least he was coherent."
September 23, 2020 at 12:00 PM
Lord yes !
Robert St. John is so such better than Sid.
I still say Sid should pay the Kingfish for publishing his goofy articles.
Sid's observations are stuck at the Neshoba County Fair and the cheese/cowbell gift shop in Starkville.
All that's missing is a link to order old Jerry Clower Eight Track Tapes.
Can Wal-mart's employees afford to take off half a day and find a ride to the polls and another to work? I venture to guess that a great many of them do not have unlimited access to a car. And can any employees who take the time off to vote expect that their jobs might be in jeopardy in the near future? Likewise employees at McDonald's, Subway, etc. But of course so many here might be of the opinion that the vote should be again limited to property owning white men.
"in-person absentee voting" - Speaking of low information!
I think we should vote by checking ballot box(es) next to the line on our income tax returns where we write the amount of our tax liability. No tax, no vote.
There is ZERO evidence of wide-spread fraud in states with mail-in voting. If you claim to have any, post it.
@4:36 what’s stopping you is that you’d be committing voter fraud. If you want risk a felony over extra one vote, be my guest.
8:55 - I think Mississippi polls are open from 7a to 7p. Of all the workplaces you mentioned, which one has an employee working those twelve hours?
Vote on Saturday? Are you serious? Where you gonna find government employees willing to work on a Saturday?
'Voting used to be easier'. Really? How many folks in the fifties and sixties who lived outside a municipality had ready access to transportation or could stop working to head to a polling place, if there WAS one?
Yeah 3:31. Life really easy for smart, hard working people like you, RIGHT. It's the lazy, ignorant people who have all the excuses of course.
They vote on Saturdays in Louisiana. Pretty good idea if you ask me.
Post a Comment