Body slamming the electorate

Absentee balloting, as it was originally conceived, is a good and necessary thing. There is no reason that people away from home, disabled or living in nursing facilities should be denied their franchise. But the abuse of absentee voting by both parties has reached a point where in many districts the outcome of elections are determined by party loyalists who have not bothered to consider and compare the actual candidates.

A dramatic example of this is happening this week in Montana's special congressional election, where the local sheriff’s office cited GOP candidate Greg Gianforte on a charge of misdemeanor assault for “body slamming” journalist Ben Jacobs after he asked the Republican about the GOP's recently passed health-care bill. It is more than likely that at least some voters undecided or leaning toward Gianforte will reconsider their vote in light of his seeming inability to control himself under pressure. How likely do you think it is that the outcome of the race will be changed, however, when you consider that election analysts estimate that roughly two-thirds of early votes had already been cast before one of the candidates faced an assault charge?

One possible way of fixing early voting abuse would be to permit absentee ballots to be mailed no sooner than three days before election day; ballots with earlier postmarks would be disqualified. To keep party operatives from rounding up ballots weeks in advance and bulk mailing them within the deadline, absentee ballots would also be required under penalty of law to be signed on the day they were mailed. Such a deadline would not seriously inconvenience any of the intended users of absentee voting, those actually absent from their precincts, while allowing campaigns to play out to the fullest extent possible.