Maybe Voting Shouldn't Be That Easy

By Jennifer Hill

The Dinesh D’Souza documentary 2000 mules debuted last week and while the film had some glaring flaws and lots of conjecture it did jumpstart an important discussion about voting rules in the U.S. The tradition of election tampering in this nation goes back more than a century, and even if you set D’Souza’s claims of ballot trafficking to the side, even if you decide there’s simply not enough solid evidence of illegal voting activity in the 2020 election, the basic fact is that in this day and age our elections are less secure and our votes less verified than before, all while we encourage absolutely everyone to vote on everything, and it’s astounding.

In response to the 2020 pandemic, 11 states decided to protect their people from a virus by mailing ballots to every citizen while a handful of other states greatly expanded access to absentee ballots, and it worked. From 1980 –2016 55%-59% of eligible voters consistently participated in national elections, but in 2020, when voting access is suddenly in your mailbox, that percent jumped up to over 66%. A few of these states had already instituted mail in ballots as the primary form of voting in prior years, but there’s no doubt that fundamentally altering the way many American’s exercise the democratic process impacted vote turn out and thus results.

Last week I participated in the primary election for the first time in my new state of Nebraska. Coming from Colorado where mail in ballots were the norm, it had been years since I’d actually gone into a polling place to complete my ballot, and consequently I began to reflect on just how much we had lost by giving up our traditional voting method.

Beyond the concerns that ballot tampering is made drastically easier with mail in ballots I also find myself disquieted about the ease of voting it provides. If you believe that our voting system has any integrity at all, or should anyway, then you should be able to see the value of having an electorate that’s involved and informed rather than a mass of people who’ve done no research and are making their decisions based on the sound of the names on the paper. Physically going to the poll on the allotted day requires some foresight, effort and commitment, qualities we should want in our electorate. It stands to reason that, compared to those who willingly participate in mail in voting, a larger number of voters who take the time to vote at the polls will have also taken the time to at least do the bare minimum level of research and have likely given at least some thought to the issues they are deciding.

The last twenty years has witnessed a massive push in “Get Out the Vote” efforts, and clearly it works in our hyper-polarized society. But just because MTV and Oprah encourage everyone to vote, does that really mean it’s a good thing? Only if the people responding to that message have given legitimate thought to the issues and candidates they cast ballots for. I, for one, am not totally confident in that.

I do not claim to be an expert on every candidate or issue on my ballot. But I will also unashamedly admit, I leave some boxes empty. For example, in last week’s primary election there were several offices that, being new to the state, I was just plain unprepared to vote on. I hadn’t done my due diligence, so rather than picking someone based off the sound of their name, I skipped that vote. And you know what? Democracy didn’t stop turning and I got my ‘I Voted’ sticker anyway. The question we need to ask ourselves, especially as the 2024 election looms, is; do we really want to make voting as easy as possible, or is it important enough that we should expect some minimal level of effort to prove worthiness?