Does early voting undermine the democratic process?

Early voting.
(Image credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

Early voting has become increasingly popular in recent years for its flexibility, making voting easier for anyone who may need additional time to get to the polls. As of Thursday, more than 30 million Americans had already cast early ballots, and both campaigns are using early voting data to help hone their final pre-election push.

But convenience aside, is early voting really such a good idea? Residents of some states could vote as early as Sept. 23, which means they may have voted weeks before learning about major new information, like Donald Trump's sexual remarks and assault scandal (which began Oct. 7) or Hillary Clinton's extended email investigation (which began Oct. 28).

"This demonstrates the high costs early voting can have for voters," argues Eugene Kontorovich at The Hill, "and how it threatens the very nature of democracy and political competition" by fostering base partisanship and uninformed votes.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Kontorovich contends that particularly in an "informationally back-loaded" campaign like this one, "Early voters have less information, and are thus more likely to be acting on pure partisan or identity-politics allegiance than on a consideration of the candidates and their positions." As a result, he adds, "early voting only reinforces the growing factionalism and polarization that pretty much everyone bemoans."

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.