Is Early Voting Unwise?
Mark Davis, in a The Dallas Morning News op-ed, claims he now has proof for his longstanding opinion that early voting is "a stain on our democracy." The evidence is the recent mayoral election in Carrollton, where mayor Becky Miller was turned out of office after news broke late in the campaign that various claims she's made over the years about her personal life may have been tall tales. The early voting was going Miller's way. After the news broke, votes on election day swung against Miller.
My first reaction was to think, sure, waiting until the last minute to vote is best, just in case something like this comes to light. Then, I realized that Mark Davis is a rightwing talk radio show host. News breaking close to election day leaves little time for the victim of the attack to respond. Mark Davis would probably take great personal satisfaction in breaking a story late in a campaign, an October surprise, that delivered an election to a conservative wingnut.
How best to guard against unscrupulous talk radio show hosts who might take advantage of this? I can think of nothing more effective than to spread out the balloting over several weeks, exactly as early voting does. Slurs and slanders late in the campaign will be too late to influence early voters. And slurs and slanders sprung early enough to influence early voters give the victim time enough to get the truth out for the late voters.
Yep, early voting limits the power of radio wingnuts like Mark Davis to manipulate the outcome of elections. I hadn't given this much thought before Mark Davis weighed in on the subject, but he's convinced me that early voting, far from being a stain on democracy, might just turn out to be its savior.
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