End Early Voting

Let's get rid of ignorant voting by the chronologically uninformed and replace it with a communal celebration of democracy.

What if the biggest threat to democracy is the method by which we participate in democracy? This year’s statewide elections in Virginia prove the cancer vector inside our collective decision-making is Early Voting. We should call it what it is - Ignorant Voting – then get rid of it forever.

In Virginia, 421,000 people have already voted in this year’s three statewide elections out of an expected total turnout of just over 3 million. All those ballots were cast before tonight’s gubernatorial debate or next week’s Attorney General race debate. Almost all of them were put in the bucket before the scandal that has rocked the Old Dominion – revelations that Democratic Attorney General nominee Jay Jones fantasized about assassinating a Republican Speaker of the House and hoped for the death of his toddler children.

The Jay Jones scandal has also become the centerpiece of the governor’s race because Democrat Abigail Spanberger has failed to muster the nerve to kick him off her ticket. Spanberger is being yanked by the far left of her party that inexplicably thinks wishing violence on political opponents is acceptable. Polling shows 25 percent of voters who call themselves “very liberal” now find political violence justifiable, even in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In Virginia, the hard-left leaders of the state legislature quickly laid down the expectation that Democrats would stay cozy with the assassination fetishist Jones and Spanberger has toed the line.

Her timidity is big news because it’s off-brand. Spanberger made her mark in Congress defying party boss Nancy Pelosi in a Speaker’s election and for a profane rant against her party’s leadership after the 2020 elections. Spanberger’s TV ads show her firing a semi-automatic rifle to prove she is not a garden variety liberal, but her reticence in dumping Jones had made her look like a wallflower, at best.

Many of Virginia’s early voters backed Spanberger and Jones, in the dark about his ugliest death wishes, and wish they had those ballots back. We need to change the law. Driving while drunk is illegal; we need to make voting while stupid illegal, too.

Every voter needs to see the entire campaign: the debates, the news, the ads all need to unfold before decisions are made. Then, over the last weekend before the first Tuesday in November, they can sit at kitchen tables and weigh the evidence with their family like a jury deliberates, and on Tuesday, gather with neighbors and vote, as juries vote, in person

We can eliminate early voting on the same grounds we got rid of automatic motorized seat belts in cars: by deciding it is a convenience not worth its cost. It is not like early voting is inherent in our democratic process. No-excuse absentee mail voting did not exist anywhere until 1974 and only two states did it before the 1990s. Only two states had early in-person voting before the 1990s as well. Like most bad ideas, California led the way in both methods.

Virginia’s no-excuse early voting is a recent phenomenon but we made up for lost time by doing it worse than anyone – becoming one of only four states that makes voting available in mid-September.

The cancer of Ignorant Voting spread fastest during the pandemic as reformers used the crisis to alter their voting processes and push decision-making into earlier, and dumber, phases of the campaign. By 2024, only forty percent of presidential election participants voted on election day.

The reformers – or deformers, rather – contend early voting makes the process more convenient and encourages participation, but the numbers indicate it is not working. Turnout in 2024 was 57.8 percent of the voting-age population choosing between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. In the 1972 election, the last one before the election barrel became poisoned with the first drop of early voting oil, turnout was 57 percent. Every presidential election from 1952 to 1968 had turnout over 60 percent.

Deformers argue no one should wait in line at the polls, or be bothered with arranging child care, to cast their ballot. We can solve concerns about long lines at the polls with more precincts, more voting machines, and longer voting hours on election day.

Consider this proposal to replace Early Ignorant Voting with a true national election day:

• Take Columbus Day – or Indigenous People’s Day if you prefer – off the calendar. We do not need a holiday that divides us. Replace it with National Election Day, every year, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Encourage municipalities to move their elections to that day, and do other non-profit elections like church conclaves or credit union annual meetings on odd-year versions of the day. Make it an annual “day of deciding” throughout our culture and bring people together.

• Open the polls from 4 am until midnight – 20 hours of voting, so every American has a maximum opportunity to get there. Let your neighbors watch your kids if you must – or bring them with you to the polls to instill a love of democracy. Plan your work travel and vacations for other days. Commit to your country, for one dad-gum day, at least.

• Put precincts in every neighborhood, so no American is more than 5 miles from a polling place and have enough voting machines so that nobody waits more than 30 minutes.

• Encourage civic groups to do bake sales, chili suppers, or barbecues in the parking lots of polling places. Reduce the buffer zone outside precincts that discourage gathering so people can linger and socialize at the polls.

We have been on a 50-year fail, pushing our election laws to make voting something we do at home alone, just like we doom scroll on our phones. We should un-do that trajectory and make elections a shared experience, with a shared base of knowledge gleaned through exposure to the entire campaign, capped off by a tailgate party for democracy. Cheers!

Editor’s Note: I make TV ads for Virginia’s excellent Republican Attorney General, Jason Miyares, and I donated to his campaign even before I knew Jay Jones might revel in the deaths of people like me.

In Case You Missed It: The Virginia elections are interesting because they’re historically most influenced by federal government shutdowns, because they’ve been rocked by the national debate on political violence, and because the two leading Republicans are a Jamaican immigrant and the first Hispanic statewide officeholder, who also is the son of an immigrant. Check out my backgrounder this summer YES VIRGINIA THERE ARE ELECTIONS IN 2025.

Making Of A Man: One of my most-read columns was MAN-MAKING DAYS OF AUGUST, and I have news to report. The injury risk I weighed in theory has been made manifest. My favorite Right Tackle tore his ACL last week and is out for the season. Now he has 9 months of man-making rehab ahead.

The Archive: Check out all the columns at The What For website. Measure up your favorites against the readership’s favorites as a whole. You might be surprised.