Depending on what state you live in, you might already be able to vote in the November general election — 45 days in advance.
Early in-person voting began on Friday in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming. Michigan, New Jersey, and Vermont follow on Saturday, and Illinois and North Dakota also start before the end of the month. Other states have already mailed out absentee ballots.
But is it a good idea to let people vote for a Nov. 3 election in mid-September? No. There’s a lot of problems with it.
For starters, President Trump and Joe Biden haven’t even debated yet. Their first of three debates (assuming that, unfortunately, there will be no Joe Rogan Experience debate) is not until Sept. 29. Those will be a test for both candidates, and it will let people see if Biden has the cognitive ability to be president of the United States. If someone votes for Biden in a battleground state this weekend and realizes they made a mistake next week, there’s nothing they can do about it.
There is bound to be a lot of information released in October regarding both candidates that could affect voters’ decisions as well. In the waning days of the 2016 election, Trump’s Access Hollywood tape leaked, and FBI Director James Comey reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. It’s likely the former helped Clinton and the latter helped Trump. Those who voted on Election Day would have known all of that information, but anyone who cast an early vote before those events would be left high and dry.
Additionally, candidates up and down the ballot may drop out of races — or even die in some cases.
In the 2020 Democratic primary, some people in early voting states cast their ballots for Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar for Super Tuesday. By the time Super Tuesday came, however, each of the three candidates had dropped out of the race. Had people waited to vote, they could have supported someone still in the hunt instead of a candidate who wasn’t in the race. Hopefully, it doesn’t happen, but it’s still possible that the elderly Trump, Biden, or any number of other political candidates might have a health episode and have to drop out of the race.
Days before the 2018 midterm elections, a U.S. Senate candidate from the Green Party in Arizona dropped out in what was a competitive race between Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Martha McSally. The Green Party candidate dropping out most likely didn’t swing that election since Sinema won anyway, but it could make a difference in a similar situation in 2020.
Many down-ballot races are close, and these factors could tip an election. After all, there was a New Hampshire House of Representatives race decided by just two votes in 2018 and another decided by nine.
All those problems aside, implementing early voting is expensive. One estimate says it will cost New York taxpayers $175 million.
The coronavirus pandemic still poses a threat in the U.S., so it’s understandable why people don’t want to vote in a packed school gymnasium on Election Day and potentially wait several hours to vote. But there are other ways to fix this problem, such as adding more voting locations. At the very least, early voting could be done perhaps a week before Election Day instead of giving people a month and a half to do it.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
