Political campaigns in the U.S., especially those for the presidency, can be nasty. In this episode of Democracy Works, the team looks at the political discourse around nine particularly deplorable elections.
A sign guides people to an early voting location in Raleigh, N,C., on Oct. 24.
Bennett is executive director of Vote Early Day, a nonpartisan effort promoting a civic holiday dedicated to empowering Americans to vote early.
It’s Vote Early Day! Today, thousands of nonprofits, businesses, campus groups, election leaders and other voting enthusiasts are hosting celebrations encouraging Americans to vote early in every corner of the country.
But why vote early?
When you vote early by mail or in person, nothing can stop you from having your say. When people vote ahead of Election Day, they have the convenience of finding a date and time that works for their schedule. The lines may be substantially shorter, so you can get in, get out and get on with your day. And if you run into an issue like not having the proper ID or showing up to the wrong polling place, you have plenty of time to correct the problem and cast your ballot. In the final hours of voting, Americans can face unanticipated barriers that may keep them from casting their ballot. We’ve seen even the best-laid plans fall apart when problems arise.
Vote Early Day is a nonpartisan holiday dedicated to ensuring all Americans have the tools and information they need to vote early. Built in the same model as other civic holidays like National Voter Registration Day, it culminates in a tentpole moment: a shared day to celebrate our democracy by helping others participate in it.
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The success of this holiday is built on the idea that empowering voters is a task no single group can or should do alone. Through a broad, diverse set of partners, Vote Early Day can meet people where they are with the information they need to vote in advance of Election Day. Every business, local government office, educator, nonprofit, faith community, student group, media company, athlete, celebrity and more plays a critical role. Each group has the unique ability to build a celebration that meets the needs of their communities, customers or constituents.
With politics seen as hostile and toxically partisan, Vote Early Day events mark a fun and joyful opportunity to lower the barrier to entry into our democracy. Through the work of organizations celebrating the holiday, partners amplify the benefits of voting early and empower people to take advantage of their options to make their voices heard.
With most states changing their voting laws in the last two years, Vote Early Day provides an important opportunity to share nonpartisan, up-to-date voter information that stops political disinformation in its tracks.
On Vote Early Day 2022, we saw over 3 million votes cast — the highest number of early ballots cast in October, according to the U.S. Elections Project. This year, we expect the trend of people voting early to continue to grow, with more Americans taking advantage of opportunities to cast their ballot by mail or early in person.
This year, we will not only decide our next president and vice president, but a new House of Representatives, new Senators and several crucial down-ballot races in every state. Whether a community is big or small, blue or red, young or old, you can count on Vote Early Day partners to celebrate in your community, ensuring every voice is heard and every vote is counted.
Through the impactful celebrations organized by partners, Vote Early Day aims to continue to empower voters and make Election Day the last day to vote.
An Arizona vote-by-mail ballot from the 2020 election
Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
In the first installment of this two-part series, I focused on the many efforts that failed to roll back the popular vote-by-mail options to pre-pandemic levels and the GOP effort to disqualify more ballots. Today we focus on the states in the crosshairs.
The litigation targeting mailed-out ballots has evolved since the 2020 and 2022 general elections, when Trump-supporting Republicans lost many federal and statewide contests, and their allies took broad swipes at vote-by-mail programs. Take Arizona, for example, whose current mail voting regime has been in place since 1991, and where 80 percent of its statewide electorate cast mail ballots in 2020’s presidential election.
In mid-2023, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected a state Republican Party lawsuit seeking to ban the option. A suit filed by right-wing activists to ban ballot drop boxes was rejected in April 2024. As a result of decisions like these, more recent litigation has turned to contesting technicalities. But that, too, is not succeeding — at least not in Arizona.
A suit from activists challenging Arizona’s signature matching rules (to verify a voter’s identity based on how they sign the return envelope) was dismissed in April, but has been appealed. Another suit seeking to match signatures on the envelopes with voters’ registration forms — not the most recent election records — was dismissed in June. As a result, voting by mail in Arizona is largely unchanged.
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But states where voting by mail was dramatically expanded in the pandemic — especially other presidential battleground states — have seen even more fractious lawfare.
After 2020’s election, Wisconsin Republicans sued over ballot drop boxes, and the state’s conservative-majority Supreme Court banned them. But after liberals gained a majority on the court in August 2023, liberal advocates sued and won a suit to reinstate their use. Then, as was the case in Arizona, Wisconsin’s Republicans turned to the process’s fine print.
In Wisconsin, voters casting mail ballots must have a witness sign their return envelope. Liberals hoped to overturn that requirement but lost a federal suit to do so. At the same time a suit filed by right wing activists in state court challenged a directive that allowed election officials to fill in missing identifying information for witnesses. That suit evolved into a lengthy court fight over what address information could be used by officials to verify a witness’s identity. In September, a court ruled local officials could use the information in their voter registration database.
But no state has seen as much litigation targeting the process’s fine print and minutiae — from both parties and their allies — as Pennsylvania.
This fall, one swing county – Luzerne, in the state’s northeast — was not planning to deploy drop boxes. Voting rights advocates sued on Oct. 1 to force their use and county officials backed down for this fall. Liberals also sued in state court in September to reverse past rulings disqualifying ballots in wrongly dated or undated return envelopes. On Oct. 5, the state Supreme Court denied their petition on procedural grounds, not merits — which was a setback for more inclusive voting. Another suit was filed in April to push counties to offer voters an alternative way to vote if their ballot wasn’t placed inside a special sleeve inside the return envelope (which, under other state law, would disqualify the ballot). That suit is now before the state’s Supreme Court.
As dizzying as this sounds, it is not all of the Pennsylvania litigation. Republican lawmakers lost a suit to ban voters from returning mail ballots to county election offices. (They wanted to limit voters to voting sites.) The Republican Party sued in September to bar counties from using different protocols to help voters “cure” mistakes on their return envelopes. The state’s Supreme Court rejected that suit in October, citing a “lack of due diligence” to file earlier. However, the court has agreed to take up a suit by liberals to ensure that voters be given a chance to cure errors.
This blur of litigation is due to several factors. In 2019, Pennsylvania passed sweeping election reforms, including universal mail-in voting. That was before the pandemic, where the state expanded that option to protect public health. Then, in 2020, and again in 2024, Pennsylvania was among the nation’s presidential battleground states. The National Vote at Home Institute’s Smith Wagner and other experts also said that Pennsylvania’s courts have issued a lot of conflicting rulings on the details of voting by mail.
“Whenever new legislation is enacted, there’s always a period of litigation to work out wrinkles that may be ambiguous in the text, things like that,” said Emma Shoucair, a voting rights attorney with RepresentUs, a nonpartisan anti-corruption group. “However, some of the conflict has been due to the fact that the intermediate court that has jurisdiction over a lot of election matters (the Commonwealth Court) has been majority Republican, while the Supreme Court has been majority Democrat (although the Commonwealth Court has begun to shift very recently). You’re also seeing some differences of opinion, especially on the provision of Act 77 requiring the voter to date the ballot, between various panels of the Third Circuit (the federal appeals court). So, there is a lot going on.”
Most of this litigation will not affect voters who cast mailed-out ballots, she said. But Shoucair was watching whether voters who made a mistake on their ballot envelopes could vote with a provisional ballot — which undergoes additional verification before being counted.
She and other experts, including former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who oversaw the state’s 2020 election, urged voters to ignore the legal noise and vote early.
“With all the confusing noise of the back-and-forth litigation on mail ballots, the most important message for PA voters is actually very simple — ignore the noise!” she said. “Just remember three things that you must do to have your vote counted: 1) put your marked ballot inside the inner yellow secrecy envelope and insert the secrecy envelope into the outer addressed envelope; 2) sign your name and put TODAY'S DATE on the outer envelope — not your birth date; and 3) don't wait! If you want to vote by mail, submit your application immediately, complete your ballot as described, and mail it or drop off at one of your county voting locations immediately.”
Voting and CrossFit have a lot in common.
Spenser is a poll worker, elections nerd, civics consultant and CrossFit coach.
So it begins. Early voting in some format has begun in nearly every state, and both parties, along with an army of political action committees, nonprofits and boards of election, are now chasing the same white whale: how to turn out voters, especially low propensity ones.
However, there’s an irony here: The masterminds behind these organizations are especially ineffective at reaching the 100 million Americans who are eligible to vote but choose not to.
I would know because I’m a hardcore election nerd. I’ve been a poll worker in New York City since 2012, I worked the census in 2021, I covered voting rights as a journalist for eight years and I’m now a consultant for civics organizations. Like you, I’m the kind of person who reads (and annotates!) my voter guide, casts a ballot the first day possible and treasures my "I Voted" stickers.
For fanatics like us, it’s particularly challenging to relate to those who have no interest in voting. (What do you mean you don’t know who the Times endorsed for comptroller?!). But I’m also a CrossFit coach, and instead of thinking about voting as a sacred rite (which it is!), I challenge you to think of it how a fitness newbie imagines one of my classes:
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It doesn't matter how much I tell you I love CrossFit (in fact, it probably freaks you out even more), or how much I lecture about the lifelong benefits of metabolic conditioning. You're turned off.
But what I love most about this metaphor is this: It emphasizes that voting, like working out, is a muscle that you build (*cue the groans*). In fact, one study found that voters who were contacted by face-to-face canvassers weren’t just more likely to vote in the upcoming general election, but were also more likely to vote in the local elections the following year. “The influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies,” the authors reported.
That's all voting has to be: an exercise class. Maybe you're tired that day, and maybe it's raining, and maybe you don't love the workout, but you go anyway because that's just what you do.
So as you talk to friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and other citizens apathetic about going to the polls, avoid making your pitch grandiose and idealistic. Not only does that strategy typically backfire (“CrossFit saved my life!”), but it also opens the door to endless, pointless philosophical debates, like the utility of a single person's vote and the oppression of a duopolistic political system.
Instead, give voters practical information: when, where, how. Demystify the process with (short) explainers about how to fill out a ballot and then mail it back to the elections office or insert it into the vote-counting machine. Reassure them that it's okay to make mistakes and that you’re happy to walk with them to the polls.
But more than anything, relate to them.
Yeah, voting is kind of inconvenient and annoying (blasphemy, I know!), but do it because, for the vast majority of Americans, it's pretty easy. Or do it because you're already getting an absentee ballot mailed to your house anyway. Or my personal favorite: Do it because whether you’ve voted is publicly available information, and once you’ve cast a ballot, the political parties will finally stop texting and calling you.
Our democracy is representative only if we vote. For some of us, the motivation to get to the polls is a fierce ideological commitment. For others, it may be a bit more quotidian. And if we want low-propensity voters to begin building the habit, we have to speak to them in a way that’s genuine, empathetic and not too full-on. And once they cast their ballot, come to one of my CrossFit classes. Research proves that consistent metabolic conditioning … oh, nevermind.
Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (Emerson)
What exactly is a hobgoblin? In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the mischievous sprite Puck, who creates havoc in the forest, is a hobgoblin. Dobby, the interfering house elf in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, is also a hobgoblin.
Hobgoblins create problems.
In this season of jack-o’-lanterns and witches, Halloween parties and trick or treating, there are truly frightening things adrift in our national political scene. And one of the most frightening could be summed up as the “fear of change,” the impetus behind many of the most extreme positions.
In modern politics, a hobgoblin is the citizen who will not look at the facts, as well as the politician who projects sensational rhetoric, courts division, does not speak truthfully, nor consider change. Checking facts, bearing in mind others’ informed opinions, talking to experts, and weighing new evidence is the essence of intelligent governing.
Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. There is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind, or one’s position, to change the outcome. That is how we apply what we have learned, how we grow. If we did not change, we would still be children; if we do not change in our adult lives, we cannot make rational decisions.
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Much criticism has been heaped upon those changing their minds on issues in the political arena. But when new information is presented, be it on fracking or climate change or foreign influence, it must be considered.
Rumors or unsubstantiated claims are only distractions from the true work of change and progress. How’s this for a harrowing Halloween tale: cat consumption by immigrants? At best, an urban myth, prejudicial and damaging. At worst, a blatant lie, motivated by clumsy political grasping.
Our society has changed, and will continue to: racially, economically, in every way. We are a diverse nation and growing more so each year. Time does not run backwards and the world moves quickly. We want leaders who keep up or, even better, lead.
Watch a movie made just 20 years ago. Staying with the Halloween theme, try “Shaun of the Dead” from 2004. The means of communicating, the styles, the rhetoric, all have radically changed since. DVDs, Motorola’s Razr phone, Bratz dolls and the ubiquitous “Livestrong” bracelets now have the flavor of antiques. At the accelerating rate of change, 2044 will seem eons past our 2024. Nostalgia is one thing, but we cannot cling to old slogans any more than to our old flip phones.
Of course, there are some things which should not change: the very foundations of a happy individual and a thriving society. Good moral character, honesty, hard work, kindness, a genuine interest in others’ welfare, etc., are never outdated, always in vogue and always essential to making a person, or a country, great.
So, what do we want for ourselves, for our children, for our country, for our world? Certainly not to remain stagnant. And absolutely not to plummet backwards.
It is never enough to be against something; real change means solutions and solutions usually initiate more change. This is no time to coddle misconceived notions about the “way” America is “supposed” to be. On to the future.
Every voter in the United States will have the opportunity to weigh in on Nov. 5. That date is is also Guy Fawkes Night in England, when an effigy of Fawkes is burned in towns and villages throughout the country. Guy Fawkes was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt to blow up the House of Parliament in London.
Certainly no one would ever attempt to destroy our Capitol in Washington, D.C.?
Again, Emerson: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Don’t let the hobgoblins in. Vote with your integrity in mind.
