The Election Weekend Compromise
Finding the balance between expanded voter access and enhanced election security
There’s a crispness in the air on Election Day, a palpable energy. Everywhere you go, people proudly display “I voted” stickers on their chests. Some even declare their political allegiances by wearing shirts or hats bearing the name of their candidate or by dressing in their party’s colors, similar to the way avid fans don their team’s football jersey or other gear on Super Bowl Sunday. And other, less showy citizens still make sure that they slip into conversations that they too have done their democratic duty by going to the polls.
For many voters, this means having to sandwich a long wait at the polling place into an ordinary, jampacked day that may include working, child drop-offs and pick-ups for school and after-school activities, other regularly scheduled activities and commitments, and normal errands that involve more long waits in more long lines. These scheduling constraints are the impetus behind the push to make Election Day a federal holiday, which 66% of Americans favor, according to a 2022 American Bar Association survey.
Election Day hasn’t become a national holiday yet, but lawmakers have found other ways to make voting less of a chore. Voters have multiple alternatives to standing in line on Election Day, including early voting, absentee voting, drop-boxes and third-party vote collectors, or “ballot harvesters.”
While the spirit behind these programs should be applauded—because the programs facilitate voting—in practice, these initiatives also create new ballot security risks. First, other than early voting (which we’ll come back to later), these options don’t require voters to establish their identities in person, instead relying on means such as signed affidavits, sworn witness statements, notarization and signature verification.
Second, every additional person or location involved in the transport of ballots to the polling center where they will ultimately be counted creates a new point of exposure where the ballots could be corrupted or tampered with. In traditional, wait-in-line voting, ballots are already at the polling center when they are cast.
In a rational democracy, people would be united in realizing the need to balance the commendable push to increase voter access with measures that address the potential hazards that accompany less secure methods of voting. Cultural mouthpieces would proclaim the importance of both ensuring that people can vote easily and of protecting the integrity of the vote.
But, again, we don’t live in a rational democracy. We live in a partisan, win-at-all-costs, we’re-right-they’re-wrong democracy.
Therefore, partisans don’t see eye-to-eye on the twin responsibilities of expanding the opportunity to vote and defending the sanctity of the vote. Republicans predominantly worry about ballot integrity and typically portray programs that are meant to facilitate voting as if they are meant to facilitate cheating. Democrats care almost exclusively about widening voter access and typically redefine election integrity proposals as voter suppression proposals.
Given that the majority of society’s opinion-shaping institutions (e.g. mainstream news outlets, schools, Hollywood) are, as usual, in lockstep with the Democratic position, it’s not surprising that calls to make voting easier echo much louder than calls to make voting more secure. Even those critics who don’t just automatically dismiss election protection initiatives as voter suppression still call out these policies as solutions in search of problems. In other words, since there isn’t any evidence of widespread voter fraud, they claim, focusing on policies that are designed to prevent it is therefore a waste of time.
Election security: a democratic imperative
This argument warrants an extensive response. First, on a personal level, how many individuals who make this assertion would be willing to start leaving their personal belongings unmonitored in the breakroom or other public areas at their workplace or would regularly leave their cars and homes unlocked? After all, for a lot of these people, there’s no evidence of widespread theft or other crime at their jobs or in their areas, right?
Second, democracy is government based on consent of the governed, which the governed provide by expressing their collective will through voting. For this system to have legitimacy, people absolutely must have confidence in their elections–especially at a time when no one has faith in anything. Thus, our elections must be sufficiently secure such that there can’t be even a whiff of doubt about the outcome.
Third, nonchalance about election security is incompatible with democracy in its purest essence: one-person-one-vote. Yet, contemporary advocates for “voter rights” only appear to care that voters get at least one vote. Eliminating the possibility of people voting more than once or voting illegitimately doesn’t seem to be a concern.
It should be. Logically, illegitimate votes dilute the value of legitimate ones. Expressed mathematically, the value of each proper vote is x/(x+n), where x is the total number of proper votes tallied in an election, and n is the total number of improper votes tallied. If 1 million proper ballots are counted in an election, along with 100,000 improper ones, then the worth of each proper vote is actually 1 million/1.1 million, or .9 votes (rounded to the nearest tenth).
But, “one person-.9 votes” falls a bit short of the democratic ideal. Vote dilution thus undermines democracy, so, even if there’s no proof of “widespread” election shenanigans, the prospect of there being any should rouse all lovers and defenders of democracy to demand that elections are vacuum sealed against any form of impropriety. Anything less threatens to compromise one-person-one-vote, the cornerstone of democracy.
Yet, for all the odes to democracy that show up in the media and popular culture, nobody discusses election security as a fundamental component of democracy itself. Even those who back stronger election security measures only argue that these policies are needed to keep their opponents from cheating. They fail to make the point that vote fraud dilutes vote value, which means that to protect the sanctity of democracy. we must ensure that it doesn’t happen anywhere.
Meanwhile, those who oppose increased election security may do so partly because they think it’s a nothingburger issue or that its objective is voter suppression, but, if they’re honest, another major reason they oppose it is because the topic is a downer that kills their democratic buzz. You see, what these individuals prize isn’t true democracy (i.e. one-person-one vote) but what we could call “feel-good-democracy.” They are caught up in the romance of people having and exercising their right to vote, particularly those who were disenfranchised in the past or those who have limited influence now. These things make feel-good-democracy folks feel good. (And when those ballots tally up to a win for their side, they feel even better).
What doesn’t make them feel good is the idea that some of these walking feel-good-stories could be voting illegally or the notion that democratic nations have a fundamental responsibility to make sure that only legal votes are cast and counted. Raising points like these usually prompts feel-good-democracy-types into their go-to evasions on the subject, claiming that election security programs are pointless and also suppress voters.
Election Weekend (and companion reforms)
Election-related laws should strike the optimal balance between making it easy to vote and making the vote secure. To this end, the following policy recommendation is offered: replace Election Day with Election Weekend. Election Weekend would expand the final day of voting to a total of four days, spanning the Friday through Sunday before a national holiday on Monday.
The lengthened voting window should provide ample time for people to make it to the polls, catering to those whose main considerations are expanding voter access and making election policies more voter-friendly. But, the change should also appeal to people whose primary concern is vote integrity.
First, allocating four days for voting should end the inconsistent application of policies at polling sites, where, for instance, some locations may remain open past closing time, either because election workers keep them open or one of the parties gets a court order to keep them open. The four-day window justifies rigid enforcement of poll hours, which should be identical throughout the four days.
Second, the extended in-person window would justify shortening the absentee ballot and early voting windows. Moving up the deadline for absentee votes would let them be processed and tabulated by the close of Election Weekend. This would increase the transparency of our elections and increase public trust in the outcomes of elections that are “too close to call” because at least the results won’t turn on shadowy “uncounted absentee ballots.”
Absentee votes obviously require additional handling and verification time, so the cut-off point would have to be several days before the actual polls open. The deadline should be based on the amount of time that election officials determine will be required for these ballots to be processed and counted by the end of Election Weekend.
It’s imperative that a clear result be announced as soon as possible after the weekend, or, if an outcome can’t be discerned, that absentee votes not be the cause of the holdup. The proverbial “thousands of absentee votes yet to be counted” that periodically delays close election results simply doesn’t help build faith in elections (in an era when, as discussed, people already have no faith in anything). The absence of a clear outcome inevitably leads to a protracted period of partisan tension, the spread of conspiracy theories and public protests and counter-protests that sometimes escalate into violence.
So, on the back end, the absentee voting window should be limited for security reasons. However, it should also be reduced on the front end, but for a different reason.
Permitting people to vote too early encourages them to select their candidates early, a habit anti-partisanism seeks to break. When people choose their candidates early, it promotes the development of factions based on their choices.
This is also why early voting periods should be reduced. Realistically, Election Weekend would probably make early voting unnecessary, but, if we are allowing people to vote absentee during a designated window, then, to be fair, they should also be allowed to vote in person during the same period.
But, the ultimate, anti-partisan, election ideal would be for voters to be able to pick candidates at random, and know that, regardless of the ultimate outcome, their side had won because all the candidates are on the same side, in the sense that they all seek to improve life for everyone. While that may be a utopian fantasy, limiting early voting and absentee voting windows would at least encourage voters to take more time to fully consider the candidates, instead of pre-deciding and forming rival camps.
Portions of this post have been adapted from my book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.
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