Early Returns

Today is finally Election Day. So, like a good citizen, I went to my local polling station and voted. Fortunately the line wasn't too long and other than the women doing the checking in and checking out being hard of hearing (probably because they were in their early 80s), the entire thing was quick and painless. Unfortunately, it sounds as though that hasn't been the case everywhere and I can only hope the people who are waiting in long lines or dealing with other issues don't get frustrated and leave before casting a ballot. I know it sounds cliched to tell people how important it is to vote, but cliches tend to exist because they have a grain of truth to them. It's a pain, but the things worth doing aren't always easy. If nothing else, if you don't vote I don't want to hear what you think about anything for at least the next four years (though, if I'm being honest, it is not that I want to hear what most people think the rest of the time). Still, I think the US could do itself a favor and make the voting process easier, not harder and I think the best way to do that would be to allow early voting in more places.

I didn't vote early, but I also had no need to. I'm perfectly able-bodied, own a reliable vehicle and can carve out a few minutes of my day without trouble. But in seeing lines of older citizens with walkers and oxygen masks I couldn't help but wonder if we there wasn't a way to make it more convenient for them. Besides, Americans are always chastised by the media for low voter turnout. Well, wouldn't the best way to combat that be to allow people a two-week window to vote whenever they had the free time? A lot of things can go wrong in any 24-hour period from car trouble to a medical emergency and it would be a shame if someone couldn't vote simply because their car was in the shop and the buses were running late. Giving people a larger window to vote cuts down on the chance that someone will have a bad day and just decide to blow the whole thing off. I know this sounds a lot like begging people to vote and if someone is that easily dissuaded from going there is a good chance they don't even know who or what they are voting for, but if the whole point of an election is to do what the majority of the country wants, aren't we obligated to hear from as much of the majority as possible?

The old-schoolers say that it's called "Election Day" for a reason and just because you can do most things on your own schedule these days, that doesn't mean democracy should be on that list. Yes, well, we used to do a lot of things differently and times changed - it's called progressing. Additionally, they wonder about things like accuracy and voter fraud, worried people could vote once, come back in a week and vote a second time. My answer to that is if you have seen some of the people monitoring a few of these voting stations than you can rest assured a computer system would be no less accurate. Not to mention, I would think allowing people to vote during a wider period of time would actually produce more accurate results because asking these stations to tabulate hundreds or thousands of votes within a couple hours has a bigger chance for a miscalculation than counting up a couple of hundred votes during the course of a few days. Think about it like this: if, without telling you what it was for, someone today suggested we try and count 100 million votes all in one day they would be laughed at. Frankly, it's a logistical nightmare. If we were starting from scratch and could use all the resources available today, we wouldn't implement the same system we currently have in place. To me that is a clear sign that something should change.

The other thing the people against this idea tend to say is that voters shouldn't be going to the polls until they are totally sure of who they want to run the country and anything can happen in the last two weeks of an election. Well, I'm going to break some news for you: about 70% of the people who plan to vote had their minds made up in June and nothing which has been said in the last five months has done anything to change their opinions. Honestly, we could have held this thing a couple weeks ago and saved everyone some time. That is why I'm kind of jealous of the people who voted early - they are walking around as though this tremendous weight has been taken off their shoulders, as if once they have cast their ballot they magically can no longer hear the constant commercials telling you who they should vote for in a state they don't even live in. (Based on volume of commercials alone you would think Ovide Lamontagne was the one running for President.) Look, I'm well aware that this is probably a lost cause because even if you gave people a two-week window, a healthy majority would still wait until the last possible day to vote. But the point is some people would get it out of the way early, clearing up lines and cutting down on the hectic schedule of the day. Considering what's at stake, you would think getting more people involved as well as getting it right would trump tradition.