The convenience, sadness, of early voting
Wednesday marks the beginning of early voting for the Shelby County Primary election May 1.
Under Tennessee law, counties are required to offer the opportunity to vote early. In Shelby County the early voting period runs from April 11 to April 26 in 20 locations throughout the county.
You can find a list of locations and hours at shelbyvote.com.
Early voting evolved from absentee voting. It is absentee voting without an excuse. Louisiana first used no-excuse absentee voting in the 1920s. California, Texas and Colorado adopted it in the 1970s and 1980s. It has since been adopted in one form or another in 37 states.
The basic idea was that convenience would increase voter participation. It hasn’t.
Study after study has shown that early voting merely creates “vote shifting” — voters just choose to cast their ballots early, rather than increasing the total number of votes cast.
Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, after an exhaustive study of early voting, concluded: “We have made it easier and easier to vote … without having a positive effect on turnout.”
In Shelby County voters have adapted to the system with gusto. Anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of the total vote will be cast before the polls open May 1.
Voters like the convenience. They can vote on their own schedule in a location that may be closer to work or home or school than their home precinct. But there is a downside to early voting.
Early voting eliminates one of the communal rituals of democracy. Before early voting, citizens gathered in their home precinct — in their neighborhood, with their neighbors, to cast their votes. It was an act of community.
Now, voters, independent of one another, go to different locations at different times to exercise the franchise. The act of voting has become an individual, rather than a communal act.
There is something sad in this. I wouldn’t want to give up the convenience, but I mourn the loss of community. It is a symptom of our times.
We act in isolation, apart from our neighbors and neighborhood. We shop online, instead of in stores. We communicate by text instead of in person. We live in our own silos and don’t join together, even to undertake a basic civic activity like voting.
I don’t know that the genie can ever be put back in the bottle. If it were, it might come about through a couple of measures. First, make election day a holiday or hold the election over a twoday period — say, a Saturday and Sunday. But restrict voting to the home precinct.
Absentee voting would still be permitted, but only with a legitimate excuse, like being scheduled to work out of town, military service, illness or disability.
It’s probably not going to happen, but it’s a nice thought.
John Ryder is a Memphis attorney who serves as Chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association. He previously served as General Counsel to the Republican National Committee. He can be reached at ryderontheriver@gmail.com.