EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Time:	2:15 PM -- 3:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

November 2006

Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils

Over the past thirty years, America has undergone a revolution in voting. Not long ago, nearly everyone voted on a common election day. Today, nearly a quarter of Americans vote before Election Day, either by absentee ballot or at early voting places. In Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils, John Fortier documents the meteoric rise in these forms of voting, both the legal and historical reasons for the changes, and also the many differences in voting patterns across the states. At a November 1 book forum Panelists Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org; John Fund, deputy editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal; Thomas Mann, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution; John C. Fortier, research fellow at AEI; and panel moderator Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar at AEI, examined the latest research on the benefits and drawbacks of voting before Election Day and discussed what early voting means for the future.

 

Norman J. Ornstein
AEI

John Fortier’s book has captured the attention of a lot of people. The trend of early and absentee voting has and will continue to constitute a significant part of the electoral landscape. Accordingly, it is important to recognize the effect of such a trend and its potential cost to American democracy--that is, increased security risks, a de-sanctification of Election Day, and an emphasis on convenience above all else.

 

John C. Fortier
AEI

 

There is no longer a single election day; rather, there is a series of days leading up to Election Day that runs from the beginning of September to November. Along those lines, nearly 25 percent of people who voted in the 2004 election voted sometime before Election Day. Despite the seemingly sudden growth of pre-election voters, this trend is anything but abrupt. With a long history spanning back as far as the Civil War, this “silent revolution” was further propelled by such twentieth century changes to the American political landscape as the movement to the “Australian Ballot,” or secret ballot, and the increased mobility engendered by advances in communication and transportation. The past twenty to thirty years, however, have seen the greatest expansion of pre-election voting than any other time in American history. In 1980, a small but steady slice of the electorate--approximately 5 percent--voted absentee. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was becoming commonplace--especially in Texas, the forerunner state--for voters to be casting a vote up to three weeks before Election Day. There is no doubt that close to 30 percent of the voting population will be casting a pre-election vote in the 2008 presidential election. Oregon, along with many other northwestern states including Washington, has realized that it is no longer necessary to have polling places, and 20 percent of its voting population currently votes by mail. In Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas, election officials do not require that a voter provide a reason for having to vote early. Such states have accordingly seen an explosion in early voting. With each successive election cycle generating more and more pre-election voters, many have speculated that this trend increases overall voter turnout. Such speculations are false, as pre-election voting has little to no attraction to new voters and is done predominantly by habitual voters.

There are numerous questions that arise from the growth of pre-election voting. Perhaps the most significant issue associated with this trend is the susceptibility of absentee ballots to outside influence. There is no widespread evidence of such occurrences, but by the very nature of how they are cast, absentee ballots are not protected from fraud and run the risk of being intercepted by people seeking to influence the outcome of an election. Those who cast an early ballot also stand to miss out on important pre-election information. With people voting up to four weeks prior to general Election Day, many will likely cast a ballot before seeing televised candidate debates or before observing the crucial three weeks and the potential surprises in the days leading up to the general election. Finally, how we vote--that is, on a single Election Day--is important to the concept of American democracy. Perhaps we will begin to think of elections as less important if the voting begins to become so diffuse as to render Election Day wholly irrelevant. Ultimately, the question is whether or not we will take this trend seriously enough to attempt to shape it and its potentially detrimental effects. The best reconciliation of pre-election voting should be a short, perhaps week-long period of early voting. If we are indeed moving towards “convenience voting,” we can at least limit its effects by ensuring that voting continues to remain part of the civic enterprise that is the crux of American democracy.

 

Doug Chapin
electionline.org

This trend can best be understood as an expansion of convenience voting. It is important, however, to point out that the move towards greater early and absentee voting is not just convenient for voters, but also for election officials. Washington state is a good example of convenience voting providing election officials with a way to make the voting process more administratively sound. In that state, if there is less than a certain number of people in a certain county, than the whole region can be made into a “vote-by-mail” region. After this rule was initially made, even regions that met the minimum citizen requirement redrew their county lines so as to become a “vote-by-mail” region.  Ultimately, thirty-four out of thirty-nine counties in Washington state became vote-by-mail.  Convenience voting, to the great benefit of state election officials, shrinks the number of necessary polling places so that only the best workers and most accessible locations need to be open on Election Day. Along those lines, early voting centers--perhaps the foremost manifestation of the move towards convenience voting--have the most potential as a future outlet for pre-election voting. Eliminating the hassle of Election Day, these centers uphold the democratic nature of voting as a civic process while at the same time making it extremely convenient to cast a ballot. Finally, absentee ballots provide a record of fraud, unlike electronic voting on Election Day. Absentee ballot fraud does not necessarily occur more often but is easier to prove. Ultimately, the absentee and early voting trend cannot be stopped; we can only hope to contain it.

 

John Fund
Wall Street Journal

Now that parties benefit equally from early and absentee voting, there is a unique window of opportunity for dispassionate public discussion. It is important to recognize three things when it comes to early and absentee voting: why this pre-election voting trend is important for the upcoming election, how to influence people before this becomes a runaway revolution, and how to adjust this trend to limit its detrimental effects. Conventional wisdom at this point in the election cycle says that the Democrats will take the House and the Republicans will keep the Senate. However, Congressional Quarterly says that eighteen House races are too close to call and that there are three toss-up seats in the Senate. With races of such thin electoral margins, there is a significant possibility of some sort of “November Surprise.” With this in mind, allowing people to vote three to four weeks prior to Election Day seems both unwise and undemocratic. Furthermore, it is not clear that people are wholly in favor of convenience voting. Ultimately, we must tame this trend to capture its advantages and avoid its pitfalls.

 

Thomas Mann
Brookings Institution

The move towards pre-election voting is not going to change anytime soon. Our most important goal, therefore, should be to face the realities of the change that is currently underway. We must soberly acknowledge the irreversibility of convenience voting and seek first and foremost to mitigate its negative effects--specificially, we must make sure ballots are both secure and secret. We must also confront the myth of increased turnout. In acknowledging that early and absentee voting do not, in fact, impel more first-time voters to go to the polls, there can be a more informed debate about the merits of this pre-election trend. Voting centers, conversely, have statistically proven to increase voter turnout by nature of their convenient locations, size, and lack of Election Day hassle. It is this trend that we should therefore focus on, perhaps working to increase the proliferation of voting centers nationwide.

 

AEI intern Jessica Natbony  prepared this summary.