This election cycle, there has been a lot of talk about various election laws that have passed and will affect voters this coming November. However, one issue that has yet to take hold of the national spotlight is early voting. During the 2008 election, Barack Obama was able to win various key states and win the presidency because, in large part, he was able to clinch a large portion of those voters who voted early, either by mail or in person.
Early voting allows citizens to vote before Election Day, usually to accommodate out-of-state residents, such as college students, or those who will be unable to vote on the inconvenient Tuesday election day. In addition, as college students, some of us decide to vote in our home states as opposed to registering in New Hampshire. The absentee ballots that we send in are received upwards of a month before Election Day. Though these ballots aren't counted until November 6, they still have a significant impact on election dynamics.
During the 2008 election, President Obama accrued so many votes during the early voting period in North Carolina that even though he lost the Election Day popular vote, he was still able to secure the state's electoral votes. Though most of these early votes don't occur a month in advance, with some states having early voting periods the weekend before the election, there is something to be said about the impact early voting has.
Voting dynamics are, in large part, influenced by the specific socioeconomic groups that are physically able to vote. For example, for some people who may work odd hours or double shifts, holding Election Day during a weekday hinders their ability to cast a vote. The fact that most election days around the world don't occur during the week but instead occur on weekends attests to the fact that our election calendar is antiquated.
The decision to hold elections on Tuesday is based on our agrarian history. Back when the majority of Americans were farmers and needed a day to get to the polls, it seemed convenient to place Election Day on the day before market day, meaning that farmers could harvest their crops and then go to town and sell their crops as well as vote.
In modern times, Americans are increasingly located in cities and polling places have become more easily accessible to most Americans, which makes this out-of-date procedure more inconvenient than anything else. In a country in which 9:00 to 5:00 jobs are extremely common and in which voting on a Tuesday may be physically impossible for some, this choice may inadvertently serve to disenfranchise a select few.
Early voting acts as a solution to this problem by accommodating those Americans who otherwise would not be able to vote, either because of the aforementioned obstacle or because, like us college students, they temporarily reside in another state.
With this in mind, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned an Ohio law allowing only military personnel to participate in early voting. The court stated that all voters must be treated equally under Ohio law and that allowing early voting for some residents requires that it must be allowed for all.
Proponents of the law claimed that because military personnel could be deployed at any time, they deserved special privileges in terms of when they could vote. Although this point is in fact true, when it comes to voting, any incapacity is equally legitimate. Whether deployed to foreign soil or unable to vote because of the necessity to work to provide for one's own family, the incapacity is the same and results in the same inability to participate in the voting process. Therefore, early voting must be applied equally to all residents of a state or county.
A change in one factor or one aspect of the voting process, such as early voting, can have systemic effects that alter the nature of the election and voter dynamics. The exact nature of these effects is unknown in the best case, or intended in the worst, and therefore should be avoided at all costs to prevent any form of unlawful or unfair tampering with elections.
