Thirty-two states and the the District of Columbia allow no-excuse, in-person early voting. Wisconsin is among those states that allows its citizens to vote early, and I’d like to hear your thoughts. Is early voting a good thing or a bad thing, and why?
17 thoughts on “Topic of the Week: Early Voting”
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I think anything that makes it easier for more people to vote the better. I think every state should have same day registration. However, I never early vote I prefer to vote the day of. I bring my kids with me and make it a big deal!
I’m with proud progressive. The only reason not to have early voting would be if you made Election Day a national holiday where people would be much less likely to be kept away from the polls due to work and other duties.
But in the absence of that, both me and my girlfriend have voted early already for this election, so we can foil WisGOP’s voter caging plans for November 2:P.
I’m with proud progressive. The only reason not to have early voting would be if you made Election Day a national holiday where people would be much less likely to be kept away from the polls due to work and other duties.
But in the absence of that, both me and my girlfriend have voted early already for this election, so we can foil WisGOP’s voter caging plans for November 2:P.
In person Early Voting is GOOD.
My Husband Early Voted yesterday after the rally in Downtown Milwaukee. He is an Over the Road truck driver and didn’t know if he would be home to vote on election day. He never trusted the ‘mail in’ absentee ballots, he didn’t think they counted them. But yesterday he made out his ballot, sealed it, and watched them put it into the box. Now he feels a little more secure that his vote will be counted.
I think early voting might not be as popular in Wisconsin because we are allowed to register at the polls, but working people who wish to vote need to have this opportunity.
I don’t have a huge problem with it – allowing flexibility to help people who would otherwise have a problem voting on election day is a good thing.
BUT, it puzzles me that so many people seem revel in voting early for no good reason. You guys have been going on and on about how there aren’t enough debates…and yet you seem to like the idea of people voting before all the debates actually take place. What about a last second, bombshell revelation? While I’ll grant that most of the time, that sort of stuff is fabricated BS and one should be highly skeptical of last minute claims, voting early means you’re stuck with your vote if/when something substantial is discovered on November first.
Locke- Good point on how a “late development” could get your screwed if you already voted, but if you’ve looked into the issues and already have decided who you want, it’s worthwhile to have the option. Especially if we aren’t going to make Election Day the national holiday it should be.
Early voting is a great idea for folks like me, who’ve made up their minds and won’t waver.
Zach, do you mean to tell me that there is nothing that could come out that would make you change your mind? I suppose if your only criteria is the letter behind the name, nothing is going to change that. But otherwise, I just can’t see how you can categorically say you won’t waver. That’s not to say that a real, substantial almost universally disqualifying revelation is at all likely to happen. It just seems very closed-minded to completely shut off that possibility. Not so much so for a candidate like Feingold who’s been in office for quite awhile, but what about relatively new candidates? It’s not like we can really trust the media to do due diligence & not miss things.
Again, is there really nothing that would disqualify a candidate for you that could happen late in the campaign.
When a fundamental lack of respect for equality, personal freedoms, and a separation of church and state is lacked by most Republican candidates I ever look into… and we have crazy wings of the party (such as the Texan one) that point blank wants the ability to police private bedrooms and legislate the Bible (we don’t need this country devolving into a Christian flavored Iran).
The letter by the name does matter to me, but not so much the D but the R. I will vote for whoever has the best chance to keep Republicans out of office, unless that person is worse than the problems I have with Republican ideology.
I don’t even get to fiscal issues. I find the Republican platform’s disrespect for personal freedoms and desire to legislate arbitrary religious law so frightening I will vote for whoever is likely to keep Republicans out.
Show me a fiscal conservative that isn’t a social “conservative,” and that actually has a good chance of winning, and I’d consider it.
Locke, you are correct, it is best to wait. Think of all the poor people who voted early and voted for Dane Deutsch without knowing about his stupid Hitler is great tweet….That would be enough to make me change my vote!
It’s called Election DAY for a reason. It’s supposed to be a snapshot of where the country, or state, is on that particular day. Locke is right about the debates. For as much as many of you on here stressed the importance of debates, that importance is diminished if you allow voting a month in advance. There’s no reason to make anything a holiday either. 13 hours of open polls is good enough for just about everybody. For those with a legitimate reason who can’t make it, there is absentee voting.
I think in that case Election Day should be made a National Holiday from work. Period. I don’t like being told that because I have to break my back working, being called in for overtime because someone decided to go home early or pick up after them I can’t vote because I couldn’t get it in on time. I don’t like dealing with the fact I’m not a ‘real American’ because I walk in a day early because that’s when I have time. I also do not like being called a part of a ‘gang’ because I go there with my family and we don’t have enough money for clothes outside of Paul’s Pantry, rummage sales, because we’re focused on paying bills and keeping food on the table.
On an optimistic note though, I’m getting awesome at combining coupons though when I go to stores.
If we had it a National Holiday, we wouldn’t have this problem to an extent.
Same day voting registration should be legal. All states. No exceptions. If I have to register a month before it, I consider something is up and there some shifty dealings behind the scenes.
T, you have an interesting idea on making it a national holiday. It would definately go a long way towards helping people make it out to vote.
However, I am strongly opposed to same-day registration because it allowes too much opportunity for fraud, and we (I’m unfortunately in Gwen Moore’s district) have way too much of that again. For example, one of my friends on the east side of Milwaukee has a two bedroom condo that is currently inhabited by himself and his roommate. In the 2008 election there were still 13 registered voters at his condo (down from over 20 in 2000, due to his efforts), and by the time he got to the polls 8 of them had already voted. I recently checked my own house, and even though only my wife and I live there, there are 6 additional registered voters that I will now have to go and have removed. This is not theory, this is stone-hard fact.
T, this is exactly why I do not support same-day voting.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122576113489495571.html
It is way too easily abused, as is the lack of requiring a photo ID to vote.
JB made prosecuting Voter fraud one of his main issues and he caught the one person who did it in the last election. I am not sure why there would be 8 registered voters at your place, unless 8 people live there, but in the end it does not matter really as long as they are a citizen of Wisconsin and only vote once.
As for requiring a photo ID, that would be great if the constitution did not get in the way like it does!
Which constitution are you referring to?
What effect would it have by making it a holiday? Would it be on par with MLK, Columbus Day, and other such federal holidays? Because usually the only people who observe those are government employees. Or would you advocate forcing businesses to shut down? Never mind that still doesn’t help out essential services that can’t shut down (doctors, nurses, etc). So yeah, I guess making it a holiday would help out postal workers and government workers. That’s about it. It won’t help out the average person one bit.
As for same day registration, if you want that then we must have a photo ID requirement. I believe WI is the only state with same day and no ID requirement.