Maine lets any voter vote early, starting in mid-September. Eliot Cutler, who came within 10,000 votes of being elected Maine’s independent Governor this year, has this Wall Street Journal op-ed, criticizing the Maine system. He makes the point that it distorts the collective decision of the voters when the voting period extends over such a long period of time, because many voters vote before the campaign is complete. Thanks to Tim Brace for the link.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Voting should be restricted, as much as possible, to those who actually show up at the polls, in person, on election day.
Absentee ballots should be reserved for those who are in the military, too ill to physically get to the polling place or out of the state on election day – and these cases must be required to vote either on, or as close to, election day as possible.
Mail in ballots should not be allowed for anyone able to get to the polls. Online voting should never be allowed.
For lots of voters, the election is complete the second that the extremist party hacks are nominated in the party hack primaries.
— instant rejection of some
— lesser of evils of one (or more — for multiple offices)
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Oregon survives with ALL mail ballots.
Any less disease in Oregon by NOT having sick folks show up on election days in overheated polling places with long lines ???
More and more disabled / busy folks — taking care of other folks 24/7.
How many inter-State trucker / train / plane / ship folks are on the move — to keep the economy operating ???
How many military folks are in foreign regimes and over/on/under the High Seas defending the U.S.A. ???
I am inclined to agree with Mr. Cutler that early voters may have more problems finding out about all of their options. Generally, in my experience, the one “let’s try to look fair about this and ask everyone the same questions” article comes later on in the campaign . . . and the rest is largely mentioning alternative-party and no-party candidates merely as “also-runnings”.
OTOH, I am also inclined to believe that — even if elections sometimes seem to be about candidates — they are really *for* voters. So voters’ needs should generally come ahead of those of candidates or parties.