Vote often, not early: Why waiting until Election Day makes you a more informed voter
By the time you read this, early voting in this month’s state and local primary elections will be close to its conclusion.
Election Day — which sadly feels like an anachronism in the era of early voting – is Tuesday, and if you haven’t yet exercised your privilege, you should consider yourself prudent for waiting.
You will enter the booth armed with more information than your peers who have already cast their ballots because you’ve had the benefit of watching things play out during these last two weeks of campaigning.
And in close and contentious races — of which there are many this cycle — that can be a very good thing.
To be clear, this isn’t in any way to admonish those who have already voted. It’s critical that you did and that you continue to do so.
But a lot can happen in two weeks.
Donald Trump, for example, endorsed Phil Sorrels for Tarrant County district attorney after early voting was already underway.
Endorsements in general and Trump’s in particular may make little difference to your vote (in either direction), but for some voters, they play pivotal part in deciding whom or whom not to support. If you vote before an endorsement is announced, you might have buyer’s remorse.
There are other surprises. In last spring’s local elections, Fort Worth City Council candidate Erik Richerson was wrongly disqualified from running just three days before the start of early voting, only to have his candidacy reinstated just as early voting was ending.
It’s impossible to know whether or how many votes that cost him, but in elections with low turnout, small margins matter.
The early voting period is subject to dramatic changes in bigger, national elections, too.
The politically attuned will recall how during the 2020 presidential primary season, the landscape changed rapidly.
Multiple candidates suspended their campaigns days before Super Tuesday, in the thick of early voting in Texas.
Joe Biden, lost the Iowa and New Hampshire contests and looked ready to drop out before emerging victorious in South Carolina, the day after early voting in Texas ended.
As I wrote at the time “anyone who cast their ballot during the early voting period did so when the primary contest looked a whole lot different than it did on Election Day” — a reality that makes early voting a sometimes futile endeavor.
Proponents of early voting argue that it increases access.
In Texas, voters get 11 additional days to partake in that civic duty; some polling places are even open on Sunday.
Access is good.
But so is information.
The two weeks preceding the election, when campaigns are in high-gear and mailers are overwhelming the post office, is the first time many potential voters even encounter some candidates, let alone research their policy positions.
Legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich has argued that early voters forgo the benefit of complete and relevant candidate information by rushing to the polls before Election Day.
“The less information voters have, the more they are likely to vote based on non-candidate specific factors such as political party,” he wrote in 2016.
But isn’t that problem moot during the primary cycle?
Not so, says columnist Jonah Goldberg, who argues that early voting is particularly egregious in primaries because it “makes it more difficult for a party to choose the best or most unifying candidate.”
That’s certainly true during national races in which state primaries are spread out.
But even in local primaries, the idea of casting a ballot before the campaign is over is imprudent.
“No journalist would file a report predicting election results a month before the vote — things are just too in flux at that point,” wrote Goldberg in 2020. “But for some bizarre reason, we think it is a great idea for voters to blindly cast their ballots… before they’re due.”
We all benefit from civic participation, especially when that participation is well-informed.
If you have waited until Tuesday to vote, you should feel good about it.
And if you voted already, thank you, but you might consider waiting next time — at least until we make Election Day a national holiday weekend.
