Early Voting Begins As Some States Decide Who's On Their Ballots

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 weekends of early, in-person voting. That should be the outer limit.”

Zack Smith, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and former federal prosecutor, added in an interview with The Federalist that the early voting cycle can disenfranchise voters since new information is constantly coming out about the candidates. Voters can cast their ballots before debates, and major events like illness or death can render a person’s vote effectively null.

In 2022, nearly 700,000 voters in Pennsylvania cast ballots prior to Democrat John Fetterman’s massive stroke that rendered him incoherent at the following debate with Republican Mehmet Oz. A subsequent poll showed seven percent of Pennsylvania voters who initially supported Fetterman were switching to other candidates after the stroke and debate performance. The nearly 700,000 people who had already voted were not afforded that opportunity, and Fetterman won by just under 300,000 votes.

This year, voters could start receiving their ballots prior to the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Voters have also been deprived of the opportunity to assess Harris outside of debates, as she has not held a single press conference and has only given one interview to CNN’s Dana Bash, who refused to challenge her on issues.

Even if Harris did decide to do more interviews and debates later into election season, due to early voting, some voters will have already cast their ballot before that information is presented to them.

“The big concern with the early voting is potentially voters not having the most accurate, up-to-date information, which would lead to disenfranchisement,” Smith said, adding that the reason the Left fights so hard for early voting is because they believe wit will be “politically advantageous.”

Meanwhile, major election litigation is still making its way through the courts that has the potential change the rules of the election, against persistent guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, and affect thousands of voters across the country.

The Purcell Principle

Elections are typically rife with litigation, but 2020 was particularly concerning for voters and election integrity advocates because, as Smith told The Federalist, “During 2020 you had courts changing the rules and regulations of the election after votes were already being cast.” He warned that last-minute litigation will be something to watch for this year as well.

The Kennedy lawsuits are not the only ones being decided, and not even the only ones in North Carolina and Michigan. The Republican National Committee has over 100 lawsuits in courts, mostly in key swing states, and left-wing actors like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democrat Party are tied up in lawsuits over election rules as well.

With all the lawsuits yet to be decided this close to an election, courts could end up violating what is known as the Purcell principle, which maintains that courts should not dramatically change election rules close to Election Day. While not a hard-and-fast rule, it is something the U.S. Supreme Court has “repeatedly emphasized” to courts, according to a 2020 concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Democratic National Committee v. Wisconsin State Legislature.

“The Court’s precedents recognize a basic tenet of election law: When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road should be clear and settled,” Kavanaugh wrote, arguing that federal courts in particular should not be engaged in altering election rules that are decided by state legislatures. “That important principle of judicial restraint not only prevents voter confusion but also prevents election administrator confusion — and thereby protects the State’s interest in running an orderly, efficient election and in giving citizens (including the losing candidates and their supporters) confidence in the fairness of the election.”

Democrats Stack Allies At Polling Places For Early Voting

Even the administration of the voting process, early or on Election Day, raises significant questions. Particularly in left-wing areas with massive populations of voters, officials who run elections stack their allies in positions like poll watchers and election workers, barring Republicans from oversight.

“The issue with poll watchers isn’t only related to early voting, but also to Election Day as well,” Smith said. “We’ve seen some jurisdictions trying to set the criteria to be a poll watcher to be so onerous as that only certain left-leaning individuals would qualify, and that can certainly be an issue in jurisdictions where the party registration skews significantly one way or the other.”

As The Federalist reported, the city of Detroit hired only 52 of 676 potential Republican election workers recommended by the party. The city appointed a total of 308 Republicans, many of whom were not likely to be Republican Party members or voters, to staff precincts for its Aug. 6 primary, making up about 10 percent of election workers. Despite Michigan having a law requiring officials who run elections to appoint, “as nearly as possible,” an equal number of poll workers from each party, the city appointed 2,340 Democrats.

Walter said that issue can be compounded with early voting, where poll watchers from both sides should be present every day voting takes place, but the organization and number of Democrats in particular areas virtually ensure they are likely to have only Democrats working the polls for the days leading up to Election Day.

“Excessive early voting also burdens election workers and privileges the Left’s dominance in paid activists,” he explained. “Another left-wing advantage occurs in many big cities notorious for their incompetence and corruption, where election offices cannot be assumed to operate fairly. All this weakens democracy by weakening Americans’ faith in elections.”

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.