Votes will be counted in the presidential primaries on TUESDAY EVENING five essential states: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. But only one of those states will actually have a primary election on March 15. Missouri resisted early voting trend; it is one of only 13 states where voters NO have the opportunity to cast their ballots weeks before Election Day. That means when Missourians vote, they know one thing for sure: Their vote counts.
But for tens of thousands of voters in other states holding primaries this week, there was no such certainty.
IN IllinoisFor example, when the polls opened on February 29, Ben Carson enthusiasts who rushed to cast their ballots for their man effectively disenfranchised themselves: Carson suspended his campaign on March 4. Any votes Illinoisans cast for him would not count. It may have been convenient to show up at the polls two weeks before Election Day—no lines, no worries about the weather—but for anyone who supported Carson, it was also a complete waste of time.
Preliminary voting in ohio was even more of a lottery. Buckeye State voters could cast their ballots as early as Feb. 17. Jeb Bush was still in the race then; he didn’t drop out until after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary. So early-voting Ohioans who were eager to secure their support for Bush (or Carson) ended up securing nothing.
Early voting laws were promoted as democratic and effective; making voting easier, the defenders arguedand voter turnout will enhance. They were wrong: the data suggests that early voting options reduction to turn outIn a 2013 study, published in the American Journal of Political Science, researchers found that early voting appears to “lower the probability of turnout by three to four percentage points.” What’s true in other areas of life is true in suffrage: Make voting so effortless that it becomes minor, and voters will value it less.
But the real downside to early voting, especially in a volatile primary like this year’s Republican presidential election, is that voters come to the polls without equal access to vital information. Think about everything that’s happened in the campaign since Feb. 17, when Ohio’s early voting window opened:
The GOP candidates held three debates — in Houston, Detroit and Miami. Donald Trump had to be talked into rejecting his endorsement of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. Mitt Romney delivered a captivating TV address condemning Trump’s candidacy. Tragic Trump-Marco Rubio talks hit rock bottom R. Rubio persuaded his Ohio supporters voted for John Kasich. The news, prompted by the debate questions, focused attention on lawsuits against the now-defunct Trump University. Bernie Sanders won stunning surprise over Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary.
Campaigns love early voting laws because they allow them to “backlog” votes—early voters who have second thoughts are at an impasse, even if Election Day is still days or weeks away. And it makes sense that at least some voters Down I have my doubts: In the Louisiana primary This month, Trump won decisively among early voters but narrowly lost to Cruz among voters who waited until Election Day.
The whole point of staggered primaries is to allow later voters to take into account recent events and fresh information, but that’s exactly the benefit that early voting undermines. Turning Election Day into Election Month has proven to be one of our less successful democratic experiments. Voting works better when we do it together—not when each of us decides we don’t want to wait any longer.
