“Voting” by Sydney Williams
http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com/
“Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference,as it is by the most unscrupulous office or the most powerful foreign threat. The future of this Republic is in the hands of the American voter.”
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
The ability to vote is a privilege, as well as a responsibility. It should not be denied any eligible individual, nor should it be granted to any non-citizen. Voters should learn all they can about candidates and their policies. To paraphrase Sy Syms’ ads from the 1980s, democracy depends on an educated electorate. “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all,” said John F. Kennedy.
Many of us live in one-party states. A consequence is that if one is registered with the “out” party, there is a tendency to feel one’s vote will not matter, for example a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in San Francisco or New York City. Trends in voter registration suggest dissatisfaction with both parties. Twenty years ago, 30% of all voters were registered as Independents (up from 20% in 1960), today that number is 40%, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in May 2020. Nevertheless, not voting should never be one’s decision. “Nobody will ever deprive the American people the right to vote,” said Franklin D. Roosevelt, “except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” And we should vote based on knowledge and reason, not inanity and emotion. Voting should be convenient and simple and should protect against fraud.
The presence of COVID-19 has many skeptical of being anyplace where crowds gather, including polling stations. One proposed alternative is to send ballots to every registered voter. There are about 153 million registered voters in the U.S. There are approximately 140,000 polling stations. Tracking legal voters is not easy. Every year, approximately 14% of the population – roughly 21 million voters – moves; another 1.5 million die and a similar number attain voting age. Keeping accurate records is a formidable task, which is why, historically, people have gone to their local polling stations to vote. Three states – Colorado, Oregon and Washington – have instituted a system to vote by mail, and their experience lends credibility to the viability of the process, but all three have been doing so for several years, ten years in the case of Colorado and twenty years for Oregon. Nevertheless, to take the process national will not be easy. “But running a vote-by-mail election is surprisingly complicated, and there’s a lot of room for things to go wrong. Validating and counting a deluge of posted ballots in an open and accountable way presents a major challenge, one that only half a dozen states are fully prepared for,” so ran an article in the August 9th edition of The Oregonian. In close elections, unintentional errors are viewed with mistrust.
Absentee ballots are issued on request in every state, in some states for any reason. (When living in Connecticut but spending the work week in New York, I would go to the town hall in Old Lyme on the Friday before Election Day where, after showing ID, I would be given a ballot. I would fill it out, seal it and hand it back to the registrar.) Some commentators equate universal mail-in-voting and absentee voting, but they are different. In the first instance, ballots are sent to last-known addresses; in the second, ballots are sent by request. The mailing of 153 million ballots, having them filled out accurately and then having them returned and secured by election day eve is bound to encounter obstacles – ballots undelivered by the U.S. Postal Service, errors and confusion among voters and fraud, especially by those who “harvest” ballots. “A potential disaster arises not because of any deficiency at the post office but because of unrealistic ballot deadline and validation standards imposed recklessly by the states,” wrote Holman Jenkins in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Anyone who thinks the process will be easy, free of error and not lead to recriminations is living in fantasy land.
This year’s primaries provided trial runs in states new to universal-mail-in ballots. The results should serve as a warning for national elections on November 3: Two months after the election, the outcome of New York’s 12th Congressional District remained unknown, as did results from Paterson, New Jersey’s Third Ward City Council elections, where 24.3% of ballots were deemed ineligible. Ballots were left in the foyers of apartment buildings, not delivered to eligible citizens. The Center for Voter Information has said that half a million inaccurate applications for ballots were sent to Virginians two weeks ago. In Florida’s 2018 elections, a state Trump won in 2016 by a margin of 1.8%, 1.2% of mailed in ballots were rejected. Margins of victory in Presidential elections have narrowed over the past two decades, making disputes more likely.
The greater concern, in my opinion, is early voting, a separate issue, but also a consequence of universal-write-in voting. Voting early does not accord with an informed electorate. Partisans vote straight Party lines, but as Independents have become the largest segment of voters, time favors those who wait until election day. However, politicians love early voting. Each vote cast is one less to seek. People are encouraged to vote early, especially after boisterous rallies, before enthusiasm dims. Forty states, plus the District of Columbia, offer early voting options, some allowing voters to vote forty-five days in advance. Early voting diminishes, not enhances, democracy.
Elections should be free and fair. Results should express the intent of voters. Winners should be magnanimous in victory and losers gracious in defeat. There will always be those unable to get to their designated place to vote, thus a need for absentee ballots. Voters should base decisions on thoughtful considerations of the best and latest information available. The media should put aside bias and be alert to fraud. In the same column by Holman Jenkins quoted above, he wrote: “Elections, in fact, are on the list of things that people like to steal and will steal if opportunities are available.” Problems are fewer when voters go to polling stations on election day. That may not be possible in this season of COVID-19 and with government’s Orwellian response; so be ready for a fight that will make hanging chads in the 2000 election seem like a fond memory.
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