Yet Another Reason to Do Away With Early Voting

[diva77]

You never know who will be left in the race on election day. Now all those people who voted early for Edwards have been disenfranchised. Early voting should be done away with!

[SmellsLikeDeanSpirit]

1. Agreed.

[lurky]

2. What if they did ranked voting?

First choice = candidate A
Second choice = candidate B
Third choice = .... and so on.

If A is out at the time of the primary, then cast a vote for B, etc.

[diva77]

5. I don't believe offering ranked voting so that you can have early voting is a

way to run safe accurate elections.

[defendandprotect]

3. I agree -- especially the locking in of the delegates ---

It's meaningless nonsense and simply gives the corporate-media a way to JUDGE and thereby
knock out candidates they don't want hanging around ... saying things they don't like.

[Blue_State_Elitist]

4. You have to acknowledge the benefits of early voting.

People who vote absentee are more likely to vote, and it's the only choice for those of us who want to avoid the electronic machines.

I worked in a State Senate race in California, and I can tell you from personal experience that many would be Democratic voters were able to cast their ballot that normally wouldn't have bothered in the past. IMO, vote-by-mail was the deciding factor in the race.

[diva77]

7. Early voting takes away from oversight & accountability at the precinct level.

If we reduce our precincts to nothing and replace them with mail in ballots, we surrender oversight to the U.S. mail and to the County Registrar of Voters. Ballots that were sent in as absentee in the past had been left out of the mandatory 1% manual tally until citizens made a stink about it in LA County and SoS Bowen took action. Also, the signature checking software is not subject to certification requirements may categorize ballots as "spoiled" and the voter will never know that their vote did not count. Also, ballots sent by mail are outside of any chain of custody - there is no accountability regarding the sending out of the ballots (by private vendor in LA County) and whether citizens receive ballots in time and whether the ballots containing cast votes are received and tallied by the RoV.

[99th_Monkey]

9. Early Primaries (in just a few self-ordained state) is different from Early Voting by mail

I live in Oregon and vote happily by mail, and trust the system in part due to a Democrat being Sec. of State, and in part due to that its a paper
ballot that I believe actually gets counted.

But I think this years stampeed by states to be the first or one of the first states to vote, which "weeded out the unelectables" ... the SAME "unelectables" being either totally ignored or openly ridiculed by the M$M (Edwards, Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd, et. al.), was a travesty for our
democracy.

Anyway, I think these are two separate issues: Early Primaries by a few select states v. Early Voting by mail.

[gmudem]

6. That happened to me.

I sent in my absentee vote for Edwards on Monday. It's not that I don't trust machines, there's just no way at all for me to be home on Tuesday b/c I'm a college student. Even Kucinich, Richardson, and Biden I believe were all still on the NY ballot.

I think it is necessary though. While it does have drawbacks like this some people like me have no choice but to vote absentee.

[99th_Monkey]

8. I've never understood why we don't just have ONE primary vote day for the WHOLE nation.

Does anyone know the rationale, other than the obvious "let the states decide for themselves" argument ... which has some merit, but
we've seen the ugly downside close up now of NOT having ONE Primary Election nationally... maybe that could change?

Is it writ large somewhere, like in the constitution, that states MUST decide for themselves i.e. embedded in the whole Electoral College
System? .. or what?