Election Day is six weeks away. Yet, in my home state of Virginia, voting began last week.
Is it responsible to cast a ballot so early?
You may know with metaphysical certainty how you’re voting for president — even in the event of some major cataclysm — but have all the state rep and city council and ballot measure campaigns also played out fully enough for you?
Here in Virginia, we get few candidate races in our split-up state and federal elections, much less ballot issues to decide. I could have made all my (very few) choices months ago. But I trust that in a more competitive and healthy representative democracy we would more want to hear out the candidates.
A lot can happen in six weeks. And you cannot change your vote once it’s cast.*
The new Democratic-controlled Legislature — in reaction to the pandemic, to prevent crowding at the polls — expanded the early voting period this year. It started September 18 and ends October 31.**
There are costs to expanding early voting — including making campaigns more expensive to run and win. Disabled from marshaling advertising into a two-or-three-week period before the vote, campaigns are forced to sustain publicity for a month. Or longer.
While better-funded incumbents have little difficulty with the added cost, it cripples challengers. It especially handicaps grassroots ballot initiative proponents battling public employee unions or the Chamber of Commerce.
Make the voting process comfortable and easy for citizens. But let’s be certain not to make it comfortable and easy for incumbents and special interests.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In Sweden, you can change your early vote, informs my friend Bruno Kaufmann, a journalist and direct democracy advocate. They call it “second voting.”
** Though several other states routinely allow more than six weeks of early voting.
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2 replies on “Worms for Early Bird Voting?”
There are two constitutional amendments on the ballot in VA this November. Be sure to check them out.
I’m not in favor of allowing voters to irreversibly commit six weeks ahead of the election, but I suspect that very few of those who would exercise the option to do so would, if not allowed to vote so early, have been willing to change their minds at any point before the election results begin to be seen. (After the winner is determined, there will be some voter remorse, originating in a misunderstanding of marginal effects.) The vast majority of people with changeable minds will wait until they become concerned that their ballots might get lost in a surge of mail, or that they would face long lines if voting in person.
I do think that people who are unchangeably opposed to candidate X and planning to vote for candidate Y are not conterminous with people who are opposed to candidate X and unchangeably planning to vote for candidate Y. Specifically, I think that a fair number of people planning to vote for Biden will, in the end, either vote for a third party or forgo voting; and likewise albeit in smaller numbers for those planning to vote for Trump.