75 thoughts on “Early Voting”

  1. Early voting makes it easier to vote, and therefore increases turnout at the margin. Since the marginal voter is more likely to vote for Democrats, is it any surprise the opinions on early voting tend to fall along partisan lines?

    3. Just what you want, to cater to the lowest denominator. Why, we should never take something as important as voting seriously enough to make it a little difficult for people. We should just let people mail in their ballots because they’re too lazy to get off their butts and walk down to the station.

      1. I drive mine into the library to drop off on election day. During the last presidential election, I saw some out of state plates on cars doing the same but I am sure they wouldn’t abuse our democratic institutions.

      2. Yessir, I am so lazy that I drove Downtown, searched for a place to park, and walked some blocks to the City/County Building, and stood in line for the better part of an hour, because with the Voter ID Law and the new ward boundaries, that the new polling place is a school I have to drive by on my work and has the worst parking congestion so that AM voting was out, and I would have to vote in the evening, I figured matters on Election Day would be even worse.

        Yessir, in the election where Bill Clinton’s later White House Counsel and then incumbent Congressman I publically campaigned against, who won reelection by 10 votes, caused the local Democrats in a recount to challenge my ballot, where I took a train to the Chicago office of Stanley T Cusper, Cook County Registrar of Deeds, to cast an absentee ballot because I was flying to Lexington, Kentucky for a “plant trip” job interview, I did this because I was unmotivated.

      3. take something as important as voting seriously enough to make it a little difficult for people

        The problem with this argument — that making voting a little more difficult weeds out citizens who don’t take it seriously — is that there’s no stopping point. If getting rid of early voting results in a more motivated, better informed electorate, wouldn’t restricting voting hours and reducing the number of polling places do the same? And why not have a poll tax and a qualifying test? People who take voting seriously will do what it takes to come up with the money, and study for the test. If fewer voters means better voters, where do you stop?

        The opposite argument — that we should make voting easier, so that election results more faithfully reflect the opinions of the nation’s adult citizens — does have an obvious stopping point: 100% voter turnout.

          1. It’s interesting that the counter argument to making voting easier is always to cry “fraud!” You know full well that if there was absolutely zero fraud, but every citizen voted, the results would be terrible for the Republicans. So you use fraud as a red herring to change the subject away from the uncomfortable fact that you and the GOP don’t want *those* people to vote.

          2. “So you use fraud as a red herring to change the subject away from the uncomfortable fact that you and the GOP don’t want *those* people to vote.”

            Ahhh Jim pulls the pin on another racial grenade. He’s carefully listening to his handler.

            Schlicter explodes that:

            “South Africa requires voter ID. So does Mexico. Now the party that helped found the KKK is pretty much calling Nelson Mandela a racist. ”

            That, of course, is the same party that selected Robert “Grand Kleagle” Byrd as it’s majority and minority leader. They Byrd who wrote this:

            I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.
            —Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1946

            If you think we have poor people in the US, you should visit Mexico or South Africa and see what real poverty is.

            Furthermore, Jim you are saying that the minorities are too stupid, too lazy, to get an ID. Why do you hate minorities so much? Why do you degrade them with your opinion about them? Why do you think them incapable of getting a voter ID but capable of getting a pack of cigarettes?

            Why do you think minorities are incapable of getting a legal ID card?
            Your contention is just so much *nonsense*.

            And if you are so deeply concenred about disenfranchising one voter because of an ID, why do you NOT care about the cancellation of a legitamate voter’s ballot equally as much?

            One last comment from Schlicter:

            ” Oh, and here’s a delightful headline from the front page of that search: “Woman Convicted of Voter Fraud Honored by Ohio Democrats.”

            It gets better. As the article reports, “Melowese Richardson, 58, pleaded no contest to four counts of illegal voting in 2009, 2011 and 2012. One count charged her with voting for her sister, who is in a coma.”

            Wait. She was convicted of voter fraud for voting for someone else? I thought that never happened. But not only did it happen with Melowese Richardson, once she was released from jail, Al Sharpton was there to greet her as a hero.

            In other words, Democrats actively support voter fraud and those who commit it. Pointing out their own actions encouraging voter fraud is a great first step toward detonating the narrative. “

        2. No, you just do it the same as we’ve always done it. I could take your argument in the other direction. Why aren’t we making it easier? Why not have the public pay to take the ballot directly to a person’s home? Why not have officials come to a person’s home and explain each and every issue to them? Why not make all the envelopes pre-paid?

          Why is 100 percent voter turnout so important to you? What if people don’t want to vote? Should it be mandated? Where is the person’s right to choose, in this case, not to vote? Are you going to force people to participate just because you think its a good idea? Er, don’t answer that, because the question is yes, just like Obamacare.

          2. No, you just do it the same as we’ve always done it.

            There is no one way we’ve always done it.

            Why is 100 percent voter turnout so important to you?

            Government by the people is best when it reflects the views of all the people.

            Should it be mandated?

            Sure. Mandatory voting doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

            It’s how totalitarians think.

            Yeah, like those evil totalitarians running Australia (where voting is mandatory). It is quite nervy to defend discounting the opinions of some citizens as a defense of their freedom.

          3. Government by the people is best when it reflects the views of all the people.

            That is an unsubstantiated opinion, not a fact. It depends on what you mean by “best.”

          4. Mandatory voting doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

            Wrote the guy who claims voter id is too excessive a burden. In Australia, failure to vote is a fine up to $170, which is over ten times as much as a Texas picture ID. Compulsory voting isn’t really working out well in North Korea, Argentina, Turkey, and Egypt. So yeah, I would say mandatory voting is asking a whole hell of a lot.

        3. “The problem with this argument — that making voting a little more difficult weeds out citizens who don’t take it seriously — is that there’s no stopping point.”

          Ahh the slippery slope argument that totally ignores what the person actually said. Jon is in favor of people voting at a voting booth. Oh the horror! How dare he! How did the world ever survive with people voting at a voting booth?

          And you equate people voting at a polling location with poll taxes. It didn’t take you long to take something that isn’t remotely related to racism and accuse a person of being a racist. In favor of people voting at a polling location? Why you must be racist…

          2. Why do you think a poll tax is racist?

            So says a US District Court:

            “that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” Judge Ramos also held that SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.

          3. What I think about a poll tax is immaterial here. You think it is racist and you were alleging that people going to a polling location is tantamount to a poll tax. That sir, is absurd and rather disgusting that you so quickly fall back on accusations of racism.

        2. And what about the republican voters who stay home? …as in the last election.

          Are they not marginal voters?

          1. They certainly are. It’s just that the average marginal voter is more likely to vote for Democrats. Marginal voters are more likely to be young, single and/or of low income, and those are all more-Democratic-than-average demographics.

            Take the voter id law that was just blocked in Wisconsin. About 300,000 registered WI voters don’t have the necessary photo ID. Do you think WI Gov. Scott Walker (R) wants those people to vote in his tight race for re-election? Of course not. He knows that they are less likely to vote for him than the average WI voter who has photo id. He knows that requiring them to get id — which involve spending a fair amount of money to compile the necessary documentation — would make it more likely that they stay home. Voter ID is a way for him to shape the electorate in his favor.

          2. “They certainly are. It’s just that the average marginal voter is more likely to vote for Democrats.”

            Prive it. And especially prove it for the 2012 election.

        4. They appear to not be very knowledgeable on the issues or current events and are thus susceptible to Democrat’s claims that Republicans want to ban tampons and enslave black people.

          Look at the TV stations targeted by Democrats for voter turnout and you get places like Cartoon Network and E!. Great places to get voters who not know what they are voting on and base their votes on fear mongering and racial stereotypes pushed by Democrats.

    5. “Consider that for all of the hullabaloo about early voting, studies have shown it hasn’t increased overall voter turnout. Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, notes turnout is down even in states that have made it easier to vote through Election Day registration or early voting.”

  2. In 2012, I stood in a substantial line “downtown” for early voting. The On-again/Off-again Voter ID requirement was back On, it was a presidential election year, and the 2010 redistricting upended everything by changing all the ward boundaries that never happened before, and my new polling place was some distance from my house with inadequate parking. I had seen my vote outright tossed by Democrats in the infamous Cook County, and my vote is being suppressed by the Wisconsin Republicans who are working on developing their “rep.”

    The Conservative Contingent will come around here to rub their thumb and forefinger to play that small violin of theirs for me, but something tells me I won’t get support from anyone else.

    Maybe there are design trades. Maybe we should vote on Election Day as it says in the Constitution, but the tradition (I am Conservative in the Russell Kirk mode, so how we have done things is important) has it that people vote in the ward with their neighbors, there is no checking of picture ID as people know you to be who you say you are, and the process goes smoothly.

  3. My mother-in-law always cast her conservative votes early when she lived in Chattanooga, because Hamilton County operated multiple sites for early voting.

    Here in Georgia, the county I live in only operates one site, with limited parking downtown, so the times we’ve voted have been at a fire station out in the boonies that also has limited parking, but also only has to serve the voters who live in this rather sprawling precinct. This time I think we’ll vote next week, downtown. The early voting location is right where the votes will all be counted on Election Night anyway.

  4. One of the things I like about early voting is that it makes it harder to do a last minute smear job with too little time to refute the claims. When people are voting early, it becomes complicated to know when to execute the smear. If you wait until the last day or so before election day, many people will have already voted. If you try the smear earlier, it gives the smeared candidate more time to refute the claims.

    1. Yep. Early voting tends to negate the “October Surprise” that the Democrats and their media organs love to give us. Just think, Dems, early voting probably is the reason Bush the Younger survived the DUI reports that appeared the final weekend and were supposed to put Algore over the top. (Reports the Dems had been sitting on for weeks). People who might’ve changed their votes were stuck with voting for Bush (or in Palm Beach, Buchanan)

  5. But remember…there’s no voting fraud:

    Surveillance Video Apparently Catches Guy Doing Something at the Ballot Box That Left Republican Monitor Stunned

    An Arizona county party official said he saw a man stuffing “hundreds” of ballots into the ballot box and later told a local news outlet the entire incident was caught on surveillance video.

    “A person wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona T-shirt dropped a large box of hundreds of early ballots on the table and started stuffing the ballot box as I watched in amazement,” said A.J. LaFaro, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party.

    LaFaro said it all happened as he was working with the elections staff during early ballots processing. The team in charge of processing the ballots got “way ahead” so the information systems coordinator convened an extended lunch period from 11:30- 1:00 p.m.

    It was between 12:54 and 1:04 that LaFaro said he was seated at one of the cubicles, heard a loud thud and turned around to see the man who he claims was caught on tape stuffing “hundreds” of ballots. LaFaro described the man as a “vulgar, disrespectful, violent thug” with “no respect for our laws.” He said he would have followed the man to his car to get his tag number but “feared for [his] life.”

    “America used to be a nation of laws where one person had one vote,” LaFaro said, the Daily Independent reported. ”I’m sad to say not anymore.”

    On its website, Citizens for a Better Arizona says it is an “outgrowth of the grassroots movement that led to the historic recall of former [Republican] President of the Senate Russell Pearce.” The group is ”committed to improving the quality of life of all Arizonans – better schools, better health care, better jobs, better government and a better, more civil tone of respect and decency.”

    TheBlaze has attempted to contact Maricopa County officials to find out whether any investigation is ongoing. Such attempts have been unsuccessful as of the time this story was last updated.

    1. Jim’ll be along any second now to tell you there’s no way there was any actual fraud, because it’s next to nonexistent.

      1. It’s voter impersonation at the polls (the only sort of voter fraud addressed by voter ID requirements) that’s virtually non-existent.

        As for this incident, doesn’t it seem a little too perfect that the guy was wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona t-shirt? Is it impossible that this is a Republican false flag operation meant to drum up vote fraud hysteria? One state over in Colorado you have James O’Keefe’s crew posing as members of a made-up LGBT group trying to talk Democrats into endorsing ballot fraud, so it isn’t as if GOP activists never engage in this sort of stunt.

        3. Huh, a Democrat activist group that operates as a 501c4 is engaged in partisan politics and likely ballot stuffing. Now, I see why you guys went all Stalin on the Tea Party and other non-Democrat groups.

      2. You were so right:

        Jim: “As for this incident, doesn’t it seem a little too perfect that the guy was wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona t-shirt? “

  7. I actually prefer early voting, but mainly because the voting location for early voting is easier to find. On election day, I have to find what odd location has suddenly become a polling place. During early voting, the local public library is the polling place. Where I live, that fact isn’t helping Democrats.

    1. There is so much about the American electoral system that just makes me shake my head. In Canada, our polling places are the local elementary schools. The location doesn’t change from election to election. Everyone knows where the elementary schools are, the schools don’t move, and there is at least one in every community.

      The more I look at the American system, the more it looks like it was designed to encourage fraud.

      2. Ed, you’re absolutely right. Where I grew up and throughout my life, polling stations have always been schools. I don’t understand how people like Paul would have a problem (not that he doesn’t) unless there was some kind of subterfuge going on.

          1. Where I grew up (a neighborhood in “East” Sacramento) the polls were almost always at the local elementary school about four blocks from home. Once they were in somebody’s garage.

            By the time I was of voting age though, the polls were at the Boy Scouts council HQ maybe seven blocks from home.

            Of course, I never had trouble finding my polling place because I paid attention to such things. In another area years later, the polls were variously located at the library, or a VFW hall, or a newly built community center. I always managed to find them. When I moved to Fairbanks there was an election just two months after I arrived, and my polling place was in a vacant space at University Center Mall (said mall demolished in the last ten years).

            All I needed to do was pay attention.

      3. Well thanks to Rand’s unintentional reminder, I voted early on the way home today. I think the use of the public library is actually a good idea. I did find out that they opened a new early voting location a bit closer to my home at a nearby Baptist church. My actual election day polling place is a nearby Evangelical church. When I first moved into my home, the polling place was the elementary school.

        I was happy to be asked to have my picture ID ready before approaching the clerks to receive my ballot. I also like that my name is entered into a database to cross reference if I voted elsewhere previously.

      4. In my town we vote at the high school. But every state makes its own election rules, so experiences will vary from state to state.

        2. I’ve voted in Florida, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachussets, New York and never had the slightest bit of trouble finding the voting booth.

          Moreover, I never ever had any trouble getting an ID. Even when I was an 18 year old high school student.

        3. In my state, you can apparently drop off your ballot in any Democrat’s trunk and they will magically appear just when needed most.

  8. And of course, there’s no such thing as voting fraud:

    Chicagoland voting machine casts candidate’s vote for his Dem opponent

    “Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

    “While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

    While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.”

    http://eagnews.org/chicagoland-voting-machine-casts-candidates-vote-for-his-dem-opponent-2/

    1. Electronic vote tabulation like this is such an obvious vector for fraud it is astonishing that it is allowed in the USA at all. What happened to Moynihan is not possible with paper ballots.

  10. Early voting is awesome.

    The subheading is ridiculous. If the politician is a principled, forthright person that puts their political positions out there (like on a website) it takes almost no time to decide if I like them. Only if they are vague viper-tongued weasels that refuse to say anything of substance does it take time to figure out what the hell they are about, and once you’ve noticed that you already know everything you need to know about them.

    The first third of that article is bunk. The quoted constitutional side of it, which is regarding presidential elections, has nothing to do with how I vote, I’m not part of the electoral college.

    The second third, that extended voting periods makes it harder to police fraud, seems like a real problem. Not caused by extended voting, but exacerbated by it.

    The third third, is also bunk. Most voters, whether on election day or early, are less than fully informed. By the articles own argument, since early voting allegedly isn’t increasing voting totals, its the same people voting, just coming in earlier – likely because it is more convenient. Its not like these politicians are super deep and subtle people that it takes significant time to understand them and decide on your least hated pol. Besides, making a decision on understood principles is better than on dramatic emotion fluttering late-breaking particulars, and the principles, if you are looking for them, can be understood quickly.

    Standing in a half-mile queue to perform the most meaningless political activity you can, for 4 hours, forgoing dinner, warmth, and more entertaining pursuits, is not my idea of a good time (yeah, I’ve done that). Bureaucrats and other busybodies are running the process, inevitably they will make it miserable. I have to work during the week to feed/clothe/shelter myself, and don’t layabout waiting for the gov’t to call me in to do my “civic duty”. If I can vote when it is convenient to me, that is fantastic. If we want more than retirees, unemployed, and masochists to vote, we’d best expand the voting period to more than one bloody day, and find some way to deal with the fraud. Banks, Paypal, and the markets make millions of secure information transactions every day, with even more incentives for fraud, and they seem to handle it without constant catastrophe.

    1. Yes. “Local” government isn’t always very local; the closest DMV to me is 30 miles away, and I live in a small state; the situation is much worse in a state like Texas. “Free” ID often isn’t really free; you have to produce documents that may cost hundreds of dollars in fees. An analysis of new voter ID laws concluded that voters who currently don’t have valid photo ID will spend more, adjusted for inflation, than voters who had to pay a poll tax in 1964 (when the Supreme Court ruled poll taxes unconstitutional).

      1. Wow, you are f’d when it is time to renew your license. I guess you will be in jail soon for… Oh wait, I bet you get it renewed because otherwise you couldn’t function in society. How long between renewals, four of five years? Travesty. Who has the time for that?

  12. There is no one way we’ve always done it.

    True, but going to the polls isn’t difficult. In fact, that’s the way its usually been done.

    Government by the people is best when it reflects the views of all the people.
    Then why was Obamacare implemented? The views of all the people were against it. Meanwhile, your fascist streak always hints of going against the people. For their own good, of course. Note your insistence that everyone votes. That itself is going against the view of the people. This all smacks of Rousseau’s absurd notion of “Forcing people to be free”.

    Sure. Mandatory voting doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
    See above.

    Yeah, like those evil totalitarians running Australia (where voting is mandatory). It is quite nervy to defend discounting the opinions of some citizens as a defense of their freedom.

    Yes, it is totalitarian to do it in Australia. But let’s get back to the USA. It’s quite nervy to force people to make decisions they don’t want to do. In fact, it is called a dictatorship. That you cannot see this scares me and proves you democrats are all closet fascists.

  13. Why do you think a poll tax is racist?

    Because that’s how they were used in the past to prevent blacks to vote. Nice way to dodge his questions.

  14. You have to wonder whether people like Jim really listen to themselves when they speak. Because if they gave 5 seconds analysis to their positions they’d see the fundamental concept in common:

    Plantation.

    Jim seems to think it’s a terrible burden to get a legal picture ID. Well even a person on welfare could get some change from an EBT card purchase, spend the $2 bus fair and get themselves to the DMV and get a driver’s licesne..EBT change would cover that too.

    And they would do that if voting mattered.

    And a lot of them DID that in the 2012 election when the Democrats used their typical race grenades to scare the listless into voting – don’t want to lose your Obamaphone? vote; don’t want you lose yrou share of the Obama Stach? vote.

    But back to the basic flaw. The underlying theme of just about everything Democrats do is to minimize a person; keep them down; keep them poor; keep them stupid; to what end?

    Keep them dependent upon Democrats.

    In every aspect of culture they supress the urge to better oneself . This includes voting:

    “If you can’t afford one, you should be finding yourself a job. ”

    Kurth Schlicter.

    But finding a job, being self-supporting and independent is anethema to statists….like Jim.

    Jim would rather think the burden to EXERCISE the right to vote is too great. Which touches upon another Democrat meme: equal outcomes.

  15. But of course, there’ sno voter fraud. And liberals would never condone such things.

    Since liberals would never condone such a thing, who needs safeguards????????

    James O’Keefe Strikes Again
    The guerilla filmmaker has exposed how voter fraud is both easy and condoned in Colorado.
    By John Fund

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390893/james-okeefe-strikes-again-john-fund

    You can see the video there.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_uHDjk3fSc&feature=youtu.be

    850 voters in NYC are officially 164 years old

    http://nypost.com/2014/10/22/850-people-officially-over-164-years-old-nyc-board-of-elections/

    850 – 200+ more than Al Franken magically “found” after numerous recounts in order to get elected.

    “Voter fraud is incredibly difficult to detect and prosecute, absent a direct confession,” Gessler says as he notes that in other areas of law-breaking, we do not judge how much of it there is merely by the number of related prosecutions. But he also notes there is evidence of just how easy voter fraud is to commit. Last December, New York City’s Department of Investigation detailed how its undercover agents claimed at 63 polling places to be individuals who were in fact dead, had moved out of town, or who were in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, they were allowed to vote. (To avoid skewing results, they voted only for nonexistent write-in candidates.) How did the city’s Board of Elections respond? Did it immediately probe and reform their sloppy procedures? Not at all. It instead demanded that the investigators be prosecuted. Most officials are loath to admit how vulnerable election systems are, but privately many express worry that close elections could be flipped by fraud.

    1. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, they were allowed to vote.

      That’s fascinating. If that experience is typical, then 1 in 33 attempts to vote as someone else will be caught. There are 31 alleged cases of voter impersonation in the last 10+ years. If for every one of those there were 32 that weren’t noticed, we’re looking at a total of about 1,000 fraudulent votes out of a billion votes cast, a fraud rate of one in a million.

      But we should pass voter id laws — which will inconvenience millions of legitimate voters — to try to stop that one-in-a-million imposter?

      1. Having an ID isn’t an inconvenience in the least. They are trivial to obtain and remain valid for a long time. Now, losing your doctor and your insurance, that is a real inconvenience. I spent more time finding new insurance and doctor shopping than anyone would getting an ID and through the joys of Obamacare, tens of millions of people get to do that every year who otherwise wouldn’t have to.

      2. “But we should pass voter id laws — which will inconvenience millions of legitimate voters —”

        There is *NO* inconvenience.

        Zero.

        Zip.

        That you continue to believe that minorities are incapable of getting an ID displays your racism for all the world to see.

        If you can; they can.

      3. “But we should pass voter id laws — which will inconvenience millions of legitimate voters”

        P.s. Justice Stevens begs to differ with you.

  16. From the John Fund article mentioned above:

    “In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of voter-ID laws in a 6–3 opinion written by John Paul Stevens, then the most liberal member of the court. He noted that the record “demonstrates that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.” Stevens had witnessed the Daley machine up close manipulate local elections through fraud and chicanery during a distinguished legal career in Chicago that included serving both as a special counsel to a commission rooting out corruption and as a judge.”

    Justice Stevens knows it’s rampant…Our Beloved Jim? well…….kooooool aid!

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