Let's Stop Voting 'Early and Often'
"Early voting sounds democratic but creates an unacceptable risk of fraud and ballot damage, misplacement or accidental destruction." — Andrea Neal
“My father, a lifelong Republican, will be voting Democrat in this presidential election. He would have never done that while he was alive.” — unknown.
LAST WEEK a little Kansas court made a big legal point. The court ruled that you do not have a natural, god-given right to vote. Rather, it is a political right bestowed by a political system, in our case a constitutional republic. Voting therefore can be regulated and designed in the best interests of the particular society,
If upheld, the ruling would mean a state can more effectively prohibit voting by dead people, stop petition fraud, fraudulent voter registration, vote-count alteration, vote-buying, repeat voting, illegal assistance, voter impersonation, voting by ineligible individuals such as felons, non-citizens, those under a certain age and a myriad of other schemes.
The best way to do that is to limit voting to a single day, in-person, with identification, at a designated polling place. Otherwise, you invite corruption and render the democratic process an unmanageable sham. It is the only way to block the favorite tool of vote thieves — ballot harvesting.
“The corruptive power of absentee ballots or mail-in ballots is magnified when activist groups or ‘ballot brokers’ collect and deliver large numbers of ballots at once,” writes Andrew Busch in his definitive article, “Are Fair Elections Possible?” in the Claremont Review of Books. “The standard name for this practice is ‘ballot harvesting,’ though today, activists consider “ballot harvesting” a term of opprobrium and prefer ‘ballot collection.’”
Whatever you call it, early voting is changing the nature of campaigning, making it more expensive and thus more likely to benefit incumbents, who have budgets, staff and tactical advantages.
Busch, reviewing recent research on election fraud, concludes that most large-scale vote fraud involved harvesting mail-in ballots. Ironically, Mexican citizens voting at consulates here in the recent presidential election had to present proof of residency in the form of a current driver's license or ID card.
Some years ago I helped a U.S. Senator survey election experts on methods of voter fraud in use throughout the world. I was amazed at the number and sophistication of such fraud, so much so that I asked one expert why it wasn't common in the United States (outside of Chicago, anyway). He answered that the American electorate was uncommonly honest.
In hopes of cementing that reputation, the Indiana Policy Review will be urging our Legislature to return to single-day voting on Election Day. Also, we want to see: 1) expanded voting day hours (6 a.m. to 9 p.m.); 2) an increase in the number of polling sites; and 3) continued offers of absentee ballots but only to Hoosiers with legitimate reasons they cannot vote in person at the polls.
Andrea Neal, writing in “Indiana Mandate: A Return to Founding Principles,” had this to add:
“The earliest elections occurred by voice vote or paper ballot, and — as today — fraud was a concern. Candidates greeted voters at the polls, often offering food and drink to opponents as well as supporters. Elections in the early republic sometimes lasted two or three days to accommodate those traveling long distances to the courthouse; however, the idea of month-long early-voting periods or mail-in ballots would defy the founders’ understanding of ‘election day’ as a patriotic and social affair that brought citizens together for what Samuel Adams called ‘one of the most solemn trusts in human society.’”
Neal reminds us that absentee and early voting are modern inventions, beginning during the Civil War so soldiers could participate in the 1864 presidential election but it wasn’t until 1921 that a state — Louisiana — enacted the first absentee law. California was the first state to offer absentee voting for any reason in the 1970s, and Texas offered early in-person voting starting in the late 1980s.
This trend continued and accelerated during the Covid pandemic, Neal says. In 2016, two in five ballots cast for the general election were early, absentee or by mail. In 2020, 43 states allowed early voting with windows ranging from a few days to almost 50. In Indiana, early voting starts a full 28 days prior to the election.
"Early voting sounds democratic," Neal says, "but creates an unacceptable risk of fraud and ballot damage, misplacement or accidental destruction. As observed by political commentator Deroy Murdock, “Even if nothing inappropriate happens, as ballots gather dust, they generate suspicions of monkey business, especially in skin-tight races. Such doubts corrode confidence in institutions and officials.”
Our state has the historic opportunity to create a model that restores that solemn trust mentioned by Samuel Adams while preserving the opportunity today for all eligible Indiana citizens to vote.
Let’s take it. — tcl
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