Sure it is, if it’s to prevent fraud. Almost every attempt at a nonpartisan or bipartisan committee to have integrity in our elections has recommended voter ID, reliable registration databases where voter information is checked against, voter purges, and the elimination of same day registration.
The reason to get rid of early voting is because we’re supposed to vote with the same information in mind. One of these days we’ll have a serious scandal three days before the election and people will want to change their votes and then you’ll see early voting go away overnight. Especially if it’s a Republican who had the scandal.
A sure winner is one who clearly won more votes than anyone else. If after three recounts you have three different results, then that doesn’t mean the third one is the right one. It means none of them are right and all of them are right. It should be declared a tie and there should be a tiebreaker method. Either a runoff, if no one got a majority, or tie goes to the challenger, or first count is the binding count. Kinda like NFL instant replay, the original decision is only overturned if there is conclusive evidence that the other candidate won. Any method but that which we have now, where recounts almost never end satisfactorily.
Incumbents already have massive advantages. If an incumbent can’t win decisively, he shouldn’t be returned to office.
I said challenging party because if there’s no incumbent, you can still count his party as the incumbent. So if you have a seat that’s been Democratic for 20 years and one election there’s a tie, it’s pretty reasonable to assume that a lot of people want change. Given how a lot of voters just vote a party automatically no matter what’s going on, you can probably also assume that most of the informed votes were for a change, since people usually don’t change their voting habits without a reason.
It’s not the best solution, but I’ve suggested others(runoff, revote, split the term, first count is the only count unless there is overwhelming evidence that it was wrong, even a coin flip). The current system leaves the losing side disgruntled at least 3 out of 4 times, because in a close race you can always find irregularities that ended up mattering. Perhaps a polling place opened late and people were turned away, machines malfunctioned, felons voted, etc. A suffiicently close count in a democracy is not going to produce a legitimate winner, simply because there are always small errors and irregularities in the system.
2000 was a crock, I think most of us would agree. I know Gore won. Not because of all the little things, but because of one big thing: 10,000 votes for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach County due to the butterfly ballot. That’s not fraud, it’s not even really an error, but it was an unfortunate problem. But it shows how close elections don’t result in a legitimate democratic choice.
You said “no conceivable purpose”, and he conceived of another purpose, so yes, his own post is enough of a cite. That’s a plausible non-partisan purpose.
It’s not a “new rule”, because these are not questions of citable fact. When asking about things like “conceivable purposes” then yes, any post with a conceivable purpose is a cite. You can debate whether the offered purpose is actually ‘conceivable’ or plausible, if you like.
I said, “But, there is a difference: GOTV is also defensible in nonpartisan civic terms, and anything tending to erode or limit or curtail it is not.” I referred you to that post. Now, if you disagree with it, you can tell us why you disagree with it, that’s the next step here; and then some of us will say why we disagree with you, and so on, that’s how this business works. E.g., see posts #121 and #126.
Easy: If you believe in democratic/republican government, then you believe public participation is important to the process and is rather the point of the whole thing, to let the people choose their leaders; the more voters vote, the more clearly the election results are an expression of the will of the people; therefore it is important to maximize voter turnout regardless of the electoral consequences of high voter turnout. This would still apply if high voter turnout tended to favor the Pubs. If it does not – that alone constitutes a reason to question the Pubs’ policies, doesn’t it?
:dubious: You might want to think hard about that question and reformulate it. And not as a question.
If you disagree, this should be easy for you to refute – just provide what you believe to be a non-partisan reason to reduce the amount of legal voting.
Am I mistaken that the normal rules of debate apply in the Elections forum? The person making the claim is obligated to back it up; it’s not the job of the other side.
Of course it’s not your job – but if you disagree, you might want to suggest a reason for your disagreement. You can just say “I disagree” if you want, but that’s not much of a refutation. This is a matter of opinion, not fact – any discussion will be opinions. I agree with BG – there are no nonpartisan reasons (that I can think of) to reduce the amount of legal voters who take part in elections. Maybe there are some reasons I can’t think of. If you have any such reasons, I’d be interested in hearing them.
:rolleyes: You asked for a cite for a negative assertion. A cite for “there is no other conceivable reason to curtail early voting” would be logically impossible. That’s not how you respond; you respond by bringing examples of other conceivable reasons.