Voters in certain congressional districts or states have had to wait beyond Election Day during this 2022 primary season to find out who won certain races. Coming off a likely rigged 2020 Presidential Election, states must step up and do a much better job at being transparent in the process.
There is no reason to still be counting votes days after Election Day. The biggest problem appears to be various forms of absentee voting, or early voting, or mail-in voting.
While there are legitimate reasons for certain people to vote early or, perhaps, even by mail, there are also quite a few people who are perfectly capable of carving out some time in their day on Election Day to go vote.
I’m sorry, but tabulating results from Election Day only to add results from early voting doesn’t seem like the best idea.
If we’re going to allow early voting, those ballots should be verified and counted before polls close.
Iowa doesn’t have many of the problems other states have. Our primary election went well for the most part.
But when it comes to the Presidential Election — as well as congressional elections — elections in other states certainly impact Iowans. And we need to know we can trust elections in the other 49 states.
I am not going to rehash the problems of the 2020 Presidential Election. People are not going to change their mind about those results. But roughly half of the country believes those results were skewed by cheating. Even a fifth of Democrats agree — still.
Early voting — regardless of how it is done — should be done when necessary, not out of convenience. Americans should take a little bit more pride in their right to vote. And if that means finding a half an hour or hour out of their day once every two years to go vote, so be it.
But under no circumstance should Election Day results be tabulated before results from early voting. Knowing the margin that needs to be made up and then being allowed to count ballots that were filled out before Election Day just causes concern.
If we really want to avoid something like the 2020 Presidential Election — and the ramifications that followed — then we should do all we can to restore trust in the election process across the country.
