Early Voting
Heeding the call of Capt. Musk, I voted early.
I am against early voting and other unbounded residuals from Covid. Election day should be a civic event where people actually show up.
Nevertheless, I voted early because it’s now part of the political game. Forecasts based on the ratio of early-voting party members make headlines.
Back in the day, networks and wire services traditionally withheld results from the East Coast until after West Coast sites had closed. If a candidate lagged in early results, western voters might stay home. You could call that election interference.
Early voting is election interference on steroids.
The League of Women Voters disagrees, claiming that restrictions on early voting are “particularly devastating” to "voters with disabilities, people of color, indigenous communities, students, young voters, and older adults.” Same with third-party ballot drop-offs, ballet drop boxes and absentee ballots.
That’s a broad statement that no doubt encompasses some genuine hardships, but at a minimum it continues the trend of infantilizing people of color. As for young voters, getting to the polls on time is part of growing up. Older adults are more clever than they’re given credit for. Workers have extended voting hours so they won’t have to take miss work, if an employer is so boorish as to deny a couple of hours off.
Democrats pushed for broader use of absentee ballots during Covid, but they didn’t stop there. In Connecticut and elsewhere, you don’t even need ID now. You can just sign a statement saying that you are somebody on the registration checklist.
From a March 22, 2022 LWW blog: “COVID-19 brought pain, loss, and loneliness, but in the case of our democracy, it also brought important lessons. We saw firsthand how we could make our democracy available to more voters, honoring the voices of low-income, BIPOC, disabled, and other Americans. We must build on this knowledge and not waste it or use it to restrict the voter further.” (Italics added.)
Whenever a politician overuses the term “our democracy” in a maudlin call to justify change that wasn’t on the table before, I remember Soros, who used to say that he counted the coins in his pocket when a potential partner promised honest dealing.