CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – One of the lessons from the 2022 midterms is that democrats have mastered mail-in voting. Some states have made COVID exceptions permanent. In California everyone gets a ballot through the mail whether they requested it or not. In other states, including Wisconsin, absentee and early voting is widely available.
I can think of three significant changes that people who care about election integrity should fight for.
First, early voting should be curtailed. The idea that all voters are operating with the same pool of information is a legitimate public interest. In Pennsylvania more than 500,000 ballots were cast before the first debate where voters saw that John Fetterman could no longer speak coherently. What happens when a candidate for office dies before election day, yet tens of thousands of people have already voted for him or her?
Second, inconsistencies in early voting hours need to be corrected. On Election Day, polls in Wisconsin are open from 7am to 8pm in every voting jurisdiction. So it is fair that some large, liberal cities can hold three weeks of early voting, and yet smaller, conservative enclaves may be open for early voting for just one or two days? Ideally, early voting should be offered in a very narrow window, perhaps the afternoon and early evening on the Monday before the election.
Third, ballot harvesting by phone should be illegal. Imagine your grandmother receiving a phone call. “Granny Smith, I’d like you to check your mailbox. A ballot was sent to you two days ago, and it should be arriving today. Do you believe in issues X, Y and Z? If so, I’d like you to vote for Candidate Jones. If you’d like, you can get your ballot now and we’ll fill it out together. Then you can drop it in the mail when we’re done with this call.” If the voting booth is private, ballots delivered by mail should be private too.
Elections have changed. We no longer have ‘Election Day’… we have voting periods. We no longer get results on election night… we get them days or weeks later. After the polls close, the political operatives and lawyers move in.
Democrats have adjusted better to the new realities of voting. Republicans need to adapt, or keep losing.
Chris Conley
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