Let's hear it for early voting

Here's a crazy notion: how about a democracy where everyone who wants to vote, gets to vote. (Once.)

It seems like an obvious way to run a representative democracy, but 2008 is looking like one of the first years where that is actually happening. But not in every state. Just the 30-some with early voting.

Early voting appears to be the solution to the historical mistake of voting on Tuesdays. Lots of people, you know, "real Americans" have jobs (sometimes two or three) on weekdays (and weekends). They often can't make it to a polling place between 7am and 7pm on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. In 2000, I asked one of the cafeteria workers at my dorm if she had voted. She hadn't because she had been swiping our meal cards from 6:45 am until 7 pm. Sure, she had breaks, but probably not enough time for her to go back to her precinct and vote. Apparently, her vote wasn't important enough to count. (Actually, since it was Chicago, there's a chance that she did "vote", but that's another story I'll touch upon below.)

Previously, people like her were told: too bad -- you should have planned ahead and jumped through three hoops to get an absentee ballot.

But now states are providing early voting. What a concept: Vote when it is convenient for you! There are necessary limitations (a week, or a month, and not after Election Day), but this seems to implement the ideals of our democracy: The People Decide.

Not just some of the people, or those with jobs that allow time to vote (or those now without jobs). Everyone. (Except ... foreign nationals, people under 18 and those incarcerated. But those are appropriate limitations.)

Remember photographs of polling places in South Africa during its first open election? I get goosebumps looking at similar pictures from here in the US. And this is during the *early voting*! Will there be anyone left to vote on Tuesday? I hope so, I hope so.

The concern for voter fraud is, well, a fraud. And here's why: yes, there have been fraudulent registrations turned in by voter drives. And while that creates a hassle for the county to verify or invalidate dead fish, live puppies, or cartoon characters, the vote itself is not disturbed. Unless said dead fish shows up to vote.

What about people voting multiple times? Yes, it could (and probably does happen ... rarely). Yet, to have a significant effect on the outcome of the election, it would have to be a coordinated effort with lots of people. And by that very nature of having to be large to be effective, it would be easy to detect -- those kinds of efforts tend to leave a paper trail, disgruntled participants, people with loose lips, etc. It would be exceedingly difficult to secretly tip an election by a coordinated effort of multiple voting.

No, the better way to sway an election is to purge the voter rolls of people with names similar to felons. To supply inadequate quantities of ballots to certain voting locations. To use machines and ballots that are confusing to the average voter. Turn off the "overvote" detection in some precincts but not others. Do you get my drift?

Everyone who wants to vote, should vote. Period.