Man, we’re in quite the mess when it comes to voting, aren’t we? We have people complaining about what they see as strict voting laws. We have others that are trying to pass federal standards. And then there’s this race in Virginia.
One of the reasons that I’m not a proponent of early voting is that information can come out close to the end of a race that could change the way you vote. Not sure how often it happens, but the way that campaigns happen, unless you can truthfully say that nothing could happen to change your vote, then you should be waiting for all the information to come in– not lining up behind your color the second you can vote.
If you have to have early voting, you should also have the opportunity to change your vote. Or maybe, what should happen is that we allow voting from home, and you could register your vote and it gets reported daily, and whatever the snapshot is on election day, that gets kept. That way you could see real polls instead of fake ones.
And we could get all sorts of new games, like “holding back until the last day” or “voting the wrong way to make it look like the other person is winning only to change it during the time period to make it so that everyone thinks it’s going the other way.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer one day– election day. Make it a holiday if you wish– put it on a Saturday or whatever. But one day so that everyone knows when and where it is. Citizens vote however you want them to verify that and only vote once. Maybe in person is the only way.
But this doesn’t have to be this complicated.