Early Voting: For the Good or Ill of Election Integrity?

There are roughly one-hundred days between now and the election (ninety-eight as of this writing). But the first votes will be cast much sooner than that. For Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, early voting begins in September.

These are perennial battleground states; it’s hard to forge a path to electoral college success without carrying at least one of these states. (Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball ranks Pennsylvania a tossup and Michigan and North Carolina as “lean Democrat,” while the Cook Political Report rates North Carolina a toss up and rates Pennsylvania and Michigan lean Democrat.)

It’s good strategy, then, for candidates to focus their attentions on such states. But early-voting truncates the period in which this can be done. And that can exacerbate some fundamental inequalities of campaigns, which frequently see campaigns focus on areas whose electoral college votes promise big payoffs, while ignoring states who contribute less to the 270-vote total a candidate needs to win.

If there’s a shorter period of time in which to vie for what could be a quintessential state, then logic dictates candidates focus even more of there time and energy on these narrow arenas.

(But placing blame for the unequal attention candidates pay to the electorate cannot be laid at…