Imprudent early voting tempts fate and threatens election integrity.
Election Day is here!
November 8 is more than seven weeks away. Nonetheless, Americans already are voting for Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump.
North Carolina officials started to mail absentee ballots by request on September 9. Some most likely reached mailboxes the next morning. So, Election Day really became “Election Months.”
For many reasons, this is deplorable.
First, it’s constitutionally dodgy. According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution, “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.” Furthermore, 3 U.S. Code § 1 states: “The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.”
The “chusing” of Electoral College members and when they are “appointed” occurs in November, not September. Reasonably accommodating those who truly need absentee ballots is one thing. Letting anyone vote two months before November 8 tramples muddy boots across “the supreme Law of the Land.”
Second, the first of three presidential debates unfolds September 26. Citizens who cast ballots before then will vote with woefully incomplete information. Imagine the judges in a boxing match declaring a winner before either fighter has entered the ring. “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free,” Thomas Jefferson warned 200 years ago, “it expects what never was & never will be.” Voting without seeing even one presidential debate exemplifies such freedom-killing ignorance.
Those who vote early — and this absurdly so — also miss game-changing campaign news.
North Carolinians who voted absentee for Hillary Clinton on Saturday, September 10, were ignorant of what happened the next day: She collapsed at Manhattan’s 9/11 memorial ceremony after being “overheated,” “dehydrated,” and, it eventually emerged, beset by pneumonia. These developments — or Clinton’s attendant secrecy, evasion, and lies — might have caused absentee voters to choose differently.
Those who vote early — and this absurdly so — also miss game-changing campaign news.
And how foolish would pro-Clinton voters feel if they mailed in their ballots, only to watch top Democrats boot her from the ticket, due to illness? What a fine way to waste one’s vote.
How about those who vote absentee and then die? On November 8, their ballots will be counted along with those of live voters. Imagine, further, that the neck-and-neck presidential election comes down to the North Carolina recount — a re-run of the 2000 Florida ballot fiasco. The decision on who leads the U.S. government and the free world could hinge on the ballots of 500 or 600 dead Tarheels.
Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Albert Gore Jr. in Florida by 537 votes, which secured him the 2000 election. Minnesota Democrat Al Franken dislodged Republican Norm Coleman from a U.S. Senate seat by 312 votes in 2008. Franken went on to cast the deciding vote for Obamacare. It took Republican Bob Beauprez just 121 votes to keep Democrat Mike Feeley out of a Colorado congressional seat in 2002.
According to the state’s latest statistics, 11,292 adult North Carolinians died across an average seven-week span in 2014. This year, if just 10 percent of a similar cohort cast absentee ballots and then expire, the North Carolina recount could be settled by roughly 1,130 dead voters.
Meanwhile, boards of elections will store absentee ballots for months. What possibly could go wrong?
Naturally, this an engraved invitation for fraud.
But even if everyone involved in early voting were bound for sainthood, ballots innocently can get lost, damaged, or destroyed, thanks to carelessness, accidents, or acts of God. Fifteen hurricanes have struck North Carolina since 1960, NOAA reports, nine in the month of September. Warehousing cast ballots for months tempts fate.
Ultimately, public leaders should resist citizens’ demands to vote Right Now! In the United States of Instant Gratification, it seems sacrilegious for officials to ask this question, but they should:
Regarding the solemn act of voting, what the hell is the hurry?
— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.