Chaos. Corruption. Carelessness. All synonyms for America’s voting system, the way in which it is spread across all 50 states fused with disorganization, it needs to be reformed in such a way that the incompetence and prematurity of the voters does not have a chance to bring the system crashing down to its knees. The problem lies in early voting, absentee voting, who can vote, and electronic voting.
While some might say that the ability to not have to be in the States on election day to vote in presidential elections is what keeps the American voting system working for the people so that they can continue to lead their busy and generally irrelevant lives, it should be known that it is not intelligent by design; it is tearing the states apart piece by piece; it can be understood that this makes sense for our soldiers, it should only be the exception for them not the rule for everyone.
Conformity in voting would fix every little crack. In that, America must adopt an uniform voting system. Since the definition of early voting is “Early voting allows voters to visit an election official’s office or, in some states, other satellite voting locations, and cast a vote in person without offering an excuse for why the voter is unable to vote on Election Day. ” (“Absentee and Early Voting”) it can be said that Early voting is an issue in and of itself.
One of the problems with early voting is that citizens are voting without all the information. Because Campaigns have yet to end when early voting starts citizens are voting before campaigns have time to distribute everything they intend to, which in turn makes campaigns increasingly difficult to effectively run and amplifies the cost of a campaign by millions; so voters and people voting uninformed is costing more money everywhere so that people can have voting be uick and easy, as is if it does not really matter to them. Another problem with early voting is it actually costs the taxpayers millions. Clearly, early voting is a waste of money and time for taxpayers, government officials, and those on the campaign trail, and when there is not a status quo in every state either way it is an issue that needs to be solved. And what about the constitutionality of it?
It clearly states in Article 2 Clause 4 of The Constitution of the United States of America that “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States”, and in 1845 Congress passed the law that said that presidential elections would always be held on first Tuesday after the First Monday of November in years divisible by 4. By that, early voting is not even Constitutionally legal.
In Oregon in 2001 there was a court case that went to the 9th circuit of the appeals court, it was debating whether or not early/absentee voting violated federal election laws. It was decided that “We take no position on the desirability of one or another scheme for voting or absentee voting, only its legality. We only conclude that the Oregon scheme is in compliance with the federal election day statute. “(“Voting Integrity Project… print”).
So the federal appeals court said it is okay with Federal Law but we are not going to say whether or not it is actually an intelligent idea, and by saying that they were making it clear that they had an opinion on logic behind it. It can be assumed from the way they concluded the case that they thought it was idiotic, so despite their decision they even thought early voting should be done away with. It is also clear that they did not take the constitution literally; if they had they would have overturned early voting in Oregon.
All this means the election process must be renovated so that it is the same everywhere, and one of the best reforms would be to get rid of early voting across the board. As for logic in their argument, it is essentially nonexistent; reformed criminals being able to vote in one state and no criminal can vote in another state; it simply doesn’t make logical sense. The election system needs to be uniform and one of the attributes of that system is who can vote and that is simply a mess; if I can vote here but not there, is messy.
So if the state one lives in requires an i. d. to vote and one does not have an i. d. , they can simply vote in the other state. So people who are not even legal citizens can vote and while this does not mathematically make enough of difference to affect the outcomes of who wins the election it matters psychologically. People see non-citizens voting and it damages their self worth in a sense that they think even more so that their vote does not make enough of a difference in the long run so they ask ‘Why should I vote? and then they don’t vote which attacks the value of the democracy which America was founded on.
Who can vote is incredibly important, and it needs to be the same fully to define who is a citizen because voting is a right of the people and to say ‘you can vote in this state but not that one because of “this” simply should not be the reality of today. People prefer relaxed laws. This is just the reality today, so in places with relaxed laws/regulations regarding voting, people will flock to those places.
If voting regulations are the same across the board, only criminals who have been out of the system for more than five years and citizens can vote, this would clean up the voting system. The electoral system must be the same everywhere so that it cannot be taken advantage of. Voter must mean the same thing in every state. The term is so ambiguous, and so it is incredibly difficult to tell what it actually means, and so there is hundreds of ways to interpret laws involving ‘voters’ and seeing how it is used so often it needs to be defined by the government so that it means the same thing everywhere.
Ambiguity cannot be stood for in the law. The law must have the same implication throughout the United States of America. While the flip side of this has good points too, they lack practicality. It cannot be the rule that people can vote early, that is impractical, costly, and inefficient; it makes sense as the exception for those in our military because their votes need to count too but if one is able to vote on election day they must.
For the citizens of America to be so greedy and self-centered that they make taxes skyrocket just so that they can have the elections be quick easy like fast food and not all good for the country in anyway, shape, or form. The only good reason for an early election is military personnel being able to vote early if within a month of them shipping out or mail-in early voting as opposed to in-person early voting. How can one good part out way all the atrocities which are encompassed by early voting?
It cannot be allowed, if someone had zero logic to their argument would one still believe in their argument. No, so why is early voting still the reality when it has no logic to it. With strict accordance to the Constitution it’s even illegal. There is no satisfactory argument to keeping Early voting. It must be done away with because there is no actual argument for it and without an intelligent argument for it, it cannot be left standing Provided that there is no effective form of voting there should at least be a uniform way of voting.
According to the Article “Absentee and Early Voting” from nscl. rg there are many advantages to making the way in which citizens vote uniform, for example “If there is a disaster machines can be borrowed from neighboring jurisdiction. ” and “Voting machine contracts can be negotiated at the state level and take advantage of economies of scale. ” So there is both logistical and economical sense behind making the voting system uniform. Making the voting system uniform could potentially get rid of many of the previous issues which some of the states have run into like the hanging chads in Florida in 2000.
There are some disadvantages to making every jurisdiction adopt the same voting system like if there is an issue with it in one place it is likely to pop up in another one, but this is not actually that much of an issue because it is so much easier to fix one problem nationwide than a different problem in every state. So even the downsides to it are easily admissible. The solution to all this is very simple mandate voting regulations federally so that every state has to adopt them.
The regulations would outline the issues which exist within the current voting system as outlined above, they would say something along the lines of “Voting must take place on the same day in every state for citizens who are not active military. There will be no absentee for those who are not active military. Electronic voting will be put into place in every jurisdiction. ‘ Of course there would be stipulations on these to make them easy to implement, cost effective, and logical. A uniform voting system is necessary for the United States of America. Early voting is a massive issue practically and logistically.
Absentee voting makes sense only in one very specific way which should be the exception not the rule. How citizens vote should be uniform because it economically makes more sense than the current hodgepodge of voting systems. To fix all these issues would be easy, so why haven’t they been fixed? The way in which America’s voting is going right now can only be remedied with uniformity, otherwise, it is going to keep going downhill fast with no end and will collapse what was once an efficient democracy. Uniformity in one little area or chaos in every area.
