Early voting season began Friday with a court case delaying, possibly for weeks, the first ballots that were supposed to be mailed to voters, marking the start of the drawn-out election process sure to be defined by litigation, counting disputes, and poll watcher disparities.
The court case out of North Carolina, similar to another case from Michigan, directed the state’s elections officers to remove Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s name from the ballots. While North Carolina implemented an eleventh-hour delay to mailing their ballots, which was supposed to start Friday (a full 60 days before Election Day), the case is emblematic of the issues that can arise when the process for casting ballots lasts weeks instead of just one day: Some states are sending out ballots while others are still deciding which presidential candidates are going to be on them.
Labor Day traditionally serves as the turning point in an election year where Americans start paying attention to their candidates in earnest. However, now that voters in many parts of the country have an entire season to cast their ballots, elections are not being decided by a populace that is armed with the same information.
“Candidates are on trial. Voters are the jury. Fair trials and fair elections require decisions based on the same evidence,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, told The Federalist. “Weeks of early voting render that impossible, which is why ballot-traffickers and partisans uninterested in rational persuasion want those extra weeks. Polls show Americans support two
