Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Early Voting - Good or Bad?
As the polls move the closer we get to elections, I wonder if early voting is a good thing. One candidate can be hurt by early voting while the other can be helped…or vice versa. If you had voted early and then learned something that made you wish you’d have waited, you would be out of luck. If the ‘debates’ can actually change minds, those who’ve already voted early might regret their vote following a debate or two.
From the perspective of the candidates, the one with an early lead in the polls would want to see as many early voters as possible since he or she would likely be the beneficiary of that early voting. In today’s environment that would mean that President Obama would be encouraging those who favor him voting as soon as possible since he could see the gap between he and Romney beginning to close. It could’ve been just the opposite if Romney had the early lead in the polls. This is a two-edged sword.
I have no idea why we ever began the idea of being able to cast a vote early, sometimes as much as 45 days ahead of the actual election date. We have absentee ballots possible and that would seem to take care of the people who are going to be gone on Election Day.
Is the idea of early voting an outgrowth of people thinking they could avoid the crowds and possible waits in line for the opportunity to cast their votes? Is this whole idea simply the result of us voters being lazy?
For the voter who has his or her mind made up based purely on party affiliation, the early voting ability wouldn’t seem problematic since they wouldn’t change their vote no matter what. If that premise is valid, then early voting would likely impact those who are part of the middle ground who often decide the races.
That would seem to auger in favor of eliminating early voting or of, at least, limiting early voting to maybe two weeks ahead of Election Day by which time shifting poll numbers probably would have stabilized a bit more than at 30 to 45 days before Election day.
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