President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis helps make the most obviously practical argument, one of many, against widespread early voting.
One major reason for a national election day is that it allows all Americans to vote based on the exact same information and in the exact same circumstances. Having everyone vote on the same day is not only a collective and communal cultural celebration of representative democracy, a virtue in and of itself, but it also ensures that as few Americans as possible cast their votes without the benefit of late-breaking news.
For a purely hypothetical example, consider that many voters may give an incumbent higher marks on military and foreign policy than on domestic issues. In a time of peace, if those Americans vote early, they may vote for the challenger. Yet what if, after millions of citizens have voted early by mail, some foreign adversary or terrorist group attacks an American holding, interest, or ally, suddenly putting the United States in or at the brink of war? Millions of people who voted early might then wish they could change their votes in favor of the incumbent but would be unable to do so.
The will of the people, based on the most up-to-date information, for the good of the country, might then be obscured or damaged.
The president’s health scare raises similar concerns. What if an incumbent becomes incapacitated or even dies after millions of votes have been cast irrevocably? How many millions of Americans despise Trump but might have voted for Pence — or how many voted early for Trump because they like his perceived toughness, but wouldn’t bother to vote at all if the only choices are Biden and the staid Mike Pence? Under those circumstances, the fully informed consent of the governed would not be well represented.
Yes, old-fashioned, limited absentee voting upon formal request is logistically manageable and important as a recourse for those with good reasons to be utterly unavailable to vote in their precinct on Election Day. Still, it ought to be the exception to the general rule of one nation acting together at one time to express its will as a (small-‘r’) republican entity.
Plenty of other considerations argue strongly against widespread early voting. They include legitimate concerns about voting fraud or logistical incompetence, along with the possibility of massive confusion and even civil unrest if late-arriving ballots continue to trickle in for days or weeks after Election Day.
Still, none of those is as serious a problem as that of people voting for a candidate who turns out not to be physically incapable of discharging his duties. Already, our constitutional system does not adequately provide for such an eventuality. Massive early voting significantly increases the possibility that the public’s real desires will be invalidly registered. It is a disaster not just waiting to happen, but which already may be in the process of occurring.
