(Nov. 10) Official editorial of the Washington Examiner.:

The absurd delays in ballot-counting across the country add weight to arguments against the wide use of early- and mail-in voting. They also should make opponents of early voting consider other alternatives that would make voting easier.

The case against widespread early voting already was substantial. Having a single, national Election Day is a civic ritual useful for a sense of shared national purpose, and it also ensures that most voters will cast ballots with access to the same bank of information. As it is, early voters operate without knowledge of any late-breaking news, including sudden health problems that candidates may experience. Wars or threats of war, big economic developments, and major scandals all can erupt in the final weeks of a campaign. To the greatest extent possible, voters should know all these things before going to the polls.

It also should be beyond dispute that massive mail-in voting increases the opportunities for problems, even if for honest error or incompetence rather than deliberate fraud. An official commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter in 2005 found that widespread mail voting is more open to fraud than same-day voting, and less than a decade ago, the liberal New York Times was reporting, without dissent, that “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.”

Even without fraud, jurisdictions all across the country this year have experienced major screw-ups because mail-in voting went awry. They range from the 223,000 undeliverable ballots in a Las Vegas primary to the 100,000 misprinted ballots mailed to New York voters this summer. Two New York congressional primaries were almost entirely botched because of mail-in snafus….

[The full column is at this link.]


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