I am staunchly against early voting efforts and this article makes many solid points as to why this trend is unhealthy for our democracy. Think about it. The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election...A lot can happen...they are voting with a different set of facts...candidates often seek to delay the release of embarrassing information... it decreases the importance of debates A single Election Day creates a focal point that gives solemnity and relevance to the state of popular opinion at a particular moment in time; on a single day, we all have to come down on one side or the other. But if the word election comes to mean casting votes over a period of months, it will elide the difference between elections and polls. People will be able to vote when the mood strikes them — after seeing an inflammatory ad, for example. Voting then becomes an incoherent summing of how various individuals feel at a series of moments, not how the nation feels at a particular moment. This weakens civic cohesiveness, and it threatens to substitute raw preferences and momentary opinion for rational deliberation.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 18:09:11 +0000