The Crimson Gets it Wrong on Early Voting

On October 18th, The Crimson published an editorial arguing that early voting is detrimental to the American political system. Allowing people who are “too busy or too lazy” to cast their ballots early, the author states, diminishes the sense of community that election-day voting creates and allows insufficiently committed voters to cast ballots. The editorial is misguided, insulting, and an attack on our conception of voting as a right.
Much of the argument rests on the troubling and fundamentally problematic view of voting as a privilege, something some people should be allowed to do but not others. The author invokes the idea that people who vote early are either “too busy or too lazy” to cast their ballots on Election Day, notably excusing himself from these two categories when admitting to casting an absentee ballot. The most fundamental problem with this argument is that voting isn’t something citizens should have to prove themselves worthy to do. If you are over eighteen and a citizen, then your right to vote should not be dependent on the author’s judgment of your value as a citizen, or anyone else’s’. The author’s assertions to the contrary are an affront to our belief in each citizen’s right to participate.
Equally troubling, the editorial conflates being available on Election Day with commitment to the democratic process. Even if we assume that commitment to the civic process should have a bearing on your right to vote, availability on election day is a ridiculous way to measure a sense of committeemen. Having a full work schedule, a commitment to childcare duties, poor access to transportation, or any number of other reasonable obstacles to voting doesn’t indicate a lack of commitment to civic engagement. In reality, it is much more likely to indicate particular socio-economic status, level of health, or professional flexibility. The author seems to exclude from his analysis anyone without a flexible, professional work schedule.
The author’s argument, then, isn’t that voting should be difficult for everyone. It’s that it should be difficult for some people. Being able to show up on Election Day means very different things for different people. A professional who might have to shorten his lunch break is not making the same choice as a single mom who has to choose between voting and picking up the kids on time. The difference is one of class, privilege, and access to resources. I think most of us can agree that none of those arbiters of availability are fair measures of an individuals commitment to democracy. Contrary to the author’s assertion that early voting violates our civic ideals, his proposal to functionally exclude traditionally underserved communities does a far greater violence to our understanding of democracy.
The argument that voting early in some way implies a less informed decision-making is equally ridiculous. We don’t all need to hear the closing arguments from both campaigns to decide who we’re supporting. For voters with predetermined visions for what the country should be or strong ideologies, the choice is pretty simple. There is little to nothing that Mitt Romney could do to win the vote of a tax-and-spend liberal between now and Election Day. Voters who are still undecided have until Election Day to cast their vote. There’s no reason the rest of us can’t make our choice a little early.
A single mother who chooses to vote on her day off isn’t “too busy or too lazy” to cast her vote on Election Day. Whether the author of this editorial was too busy or too lazy to consider the variety of circumstances that, like his own, prevent people from showing up on Election Day is unclear. Participating in the civic process a few days early isn’t detrimental to our sense of community or threatening to our democracy. Unfounded insults and slander towards people without access to the resources or flexibility the author assumes we all have are. On early voting, The Crimson just got it wrong.