John Fund Rips into ‘Early Voting’ (I’m up to EIGHT Solid Reasons Why It Should Be Restricted)

Disadvantages of early voting identified so far:

• The political landscape can change after you’ve voted.
• Candidates reveal their rude, deceptive, or self-righteous or other less-than-desirable sides (in this case, all by one person, and there’s still about a week to go).
• Unpleasant or pleasant truths about candidates that should legitimately affect voter opinion can come in the final days. (Do you really want to tell me you wouldn’t care if a candidate’s previously unknown violent crime history was discovered after you voted for him or her but before Election Day?)
• Politicans can abuse it if they get into disputes over their residency or voter registration situation (the link is to a mythical conversation between two Ohio politicians who have done just that this year)

John Fund’s column at today’s OpinionalJournal.com identifies many reasons that are even stronger:

Absent Without Leave
Early voting may result in late election results.

This year more voters than ever will cast ballots early. The result may be that we get the final election results late. It’s possible we won’t know which party controls either house of Congress for days or even weeks because of all the disputes and delays caused by absentee ballots.

Thirty states now allow anybody to cast an absentee ballot without having to give an excuse for missing Election Day. That’s up from just 20 states six years ago. Several other states also allow early voting at government buildings or even grocery stores. This year, it’s expected that over one in four Americans will vote before Election Day.

In states such as Washington, California and Arizona, more than half the ballots are likely to be absentee. In California, more than 1 in 5 voters have signed up to receive absentee ballots for every election. Oregon has gone even further. In 2000 it abolished polling places, and everyone votes by mail.

With all due respect to The Beaver State, that is nuts. Whether or not you know it or are willing to admit it, you have lost control over your elections, as we will see. But let’s move on:

If control of Congress hinges on a few close races, don’t expect to know the final outcome on Election Night. While early votes cast on electronic machines are easily integrated into the totals from traditional polling places, paper absentee ballots are typically counted only after the others.

….. In some supertight races, a flood of absentee ballots could delay the results for weeks. “Anytime you have more paper ballots cast outside polling places, the more mistakes and delays you’re likely to have,” Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s Democratic secretary of state, told me.

Mistakes are certainly possible. In 2004, a worker at a Toledo, Ohio, election office found 300 completed absentee ballots in a storage room more than a month after the vote. At least half hadn’t been counted, and they affected the result of at least one local contest. In Washington state, absentee ballots were the main reason that two recent statewide contests, for Senate in 2000 and governor in 2004, went into overtime.

It is also more than a little likely that Washington State’s 2004 governor’s race was stolen (uncounted ballots weighing heavily Democrat were unaccountably being “found” day after day after day), yet there appears to be no move towards improving controls over voting or ballots in that state. It’s also telling that those who simply lie about Ken Blackwell somehow fixing Ohio’s elections are stone-cold silent about what happened in Washington, and, as far as I know, haven’t lifted a finger to change the crazy system that enabled the shenanigans to occur.

Continuing with Fund:

….. Supporters of absentee voting insist that it increases turnout. But that’s simply not the case.

It’s certainly true that voters like no-excuses absentee voting for its convenience. ….. But it comes at a price. Simply put, absentee voting makes it easier to commit election fraud, because the ballots are cast outside the supervision of election officials. “By loosening up the restrictions on absentee voting they have opened up more chances for fraud,” Damon Stone, a former West Virginia election fraud investigator, told the New York Times.

It’s so easy to cheat you’d be surprised who’s been caught at it. In 1998, former congressman Austin Murphy of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, was convicted of absentee-ballot fraud in a nursing home, where residents’ failing mental capacities make them an easy mark.

Absentee voting also corrupts the secret ballot. Because an absentee ballot is “potentially available for anyone to see, the perpetrator of coercion can ensure it is cast ‘properly,’ unlike a polling place, where a voter can promise he will vote one way but then go behind the privacy curtain and vote his conscience,” notes John Fortier, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, in his new book, “Absentee and Early Voting.”

I’m simply amazed that people don’t get this, don’t care about it or, I suppose, haven’t thought about it.

The 2001 National Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bipartisan group co-chaired by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, found that local election officials have grown sloppy in handling absentee ballots. “Most states do not routinely check signatures either on applications or on returned ballots, just as most states do not verify signatures or require proof of identity at the polls,” noted John Mark Hansen, the director of research for the commission’s report.

The commission concluded that absentee ballots do not satisfy five essential criteria for sound and honest elections:
– Assure the privacy of the secret ballot and protection against coerced voting.
– Verify that only duly registered voters cast ballots.
– Safeguard ballots against loss or alteration.
– Assure their prompt counting.
– Foster the communal aspect of citizens voting together.

It’s easy to make fun of the final item, but failures in any one of the first three items listed can easily compromise the integrity of elections. And this point cannot be denied — As things stand now, there simply is NO WAY to ensure that these three forms of cheating (coercion, voting when not eligible, and losing or altering ballots) will not take place. As to the fourth, letting the counting of ballots and finalization of results go past Election Day in all but the closest of races is inexcusable in the 21st century.

Add these four additional disadvantages to the four identified at the beginning of this post, and there are EIGHT solid reasons why voters should be compelled to vote on Election Day, unless they REALLY can’t get to the polls because of health or legitimately being out of town.

I’m sorry; I will not be moved on this matter. Unrestricted “early voting” is sheer madness. Why in the world are we so cavalier about exposing elections to rampant fraud (or even a little fraud)? How can at tiny bit of convenience possibly be that important?