Your Turn: Is Early Voting a Bad Idea?

• As the sordid, heart-wrenching confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh continues to galvanize voters on both the left and the right, early voting is already underway in various states for November’s midterm elections.
• In a midterm election that many – including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – have come to see as a referendum on Kavanaugh, many voters will have submitted their ballots before they know whether the Senate confirms him or not.
• It begs a long-debated question: Is early voting a bad idea?

Early voting

Thirty-four states offer “no-excuse” absentee voting or some other kind of early voting this year. Three states – Colorado, Washington, and Oregon – mail ballots to all voters.

Early voting has expanded substantially in the last few decades. In the early 1990s, only about 7 percent of votes were cast early. In 2016, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reports that 41 percent of people cast early ballots.

One of the original arguments for increased adoption of early voting was that it would increase voter turnout, which has been dropping steadily in the U.S.:

• According to USAFacts, a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative aimed at making government data accessible and understandable, U.S. presidential voting rates have declined from 69.3 percent in 1964 to 56.0 percent in 2016.
• It’s even worse for midterms: Voting rates have dropped from 55.4 percent in 1966 to just 38.5 percent in 2014.

This trend continues despite the proliferation of early voting options and an ongoing increase in the proportion of votes cast before Election Day.

Various studies have found that early voting has little or no impact on voter turnout; one even found an inverse relationship.

One study from 10 years ago found that efforts to increase convenience for voters – including early voting – have the most impact in low-intensity elections:

“Convenience voting has a small but statistically significant impact on turnout, with most estimates of the increase in the 2–4 percent range.”

All politics is local

Some researchers and studies have found evidence that local voting and electoral conditions can influence the extent to which early voting options affect voter turnout, and urge further research.

Many other factors influence voter turnout as well, including the competitiveness of the race, the type of election (presidential, primary, etc.), and the ease of registering and voting. States that allow election-day registration all have higher voter turnout than the U.S. average.

Timing is everything

In 1845, Congress established the first Tuesday in November as our national Election Day partly because disparate state election days meant that late-breaking developments saw voters in some states going to the polls with different information from those who’d voted early.

In the 2016 presidential election, then-FBI Director James Comey announced a continuation of his investigation into candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server after people had already begun submitting their ballots. Many observers believe that event changed the course of the election.

The Kavanaugh hearings could play a similarly momentous role in this year’s midterm elections.

What do you think?

Is early voting a bad idea? Why or why not? Tell your reps what you think, then share your thoughts below.

—Sara E. Murphy

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / SKrow)