The smartest thing said in committee testimony to defeat a dumb bill yesterday came from Secretary of State Steve Barnett against House Bill 1178, South Dakota’s part in the nationwide Republican plan to chip away at voting rights by giving us fewer days to early vote. Prime sponsor and Majority Leader Lee Qualm (R-21/Platte) claimed that we need to restrict early voting because voters need more information. Secretary Barnett pointed out the obvious logical flaw in Qualm’s contention:
“If a citizen is concerned about learning new information at a later date, they’re free to wait to cast their vote up until election day,” Barnett said [Bob Mercer, “S.D. Senate Panel Gives No Quarter on Early Voting,” KELO-TV, 2019.02.27].
Allowing 46 days of early voting denies no one information that they want. Shortening that early-voting period denies everyone options for voting. My Senator Novstrup and seven other Senate State Affairs members voted to kill HB 1178; only my southerly neighbor Senator Greenfield voted to stick with taking voting time away from us. Good job, Secretary Barnett!
Amen. At last, a sane statement!
No doubt, Eve! Perfectly conservative. Perfectly true. 46 days of early voting forces no one to cast an uninformed vote.
I wouldn’t mind if they gave us 60 days to vote.
What was the argument for 46 days anyways? Why 46 and not 40 or 50?
Nice. Barnett states the obvious. Common sense prevails.
Too bad that this bill even saw the light of day. Glad it is been squashed like a bug
Just a guess, but the reason for 46 days is probably because that’d be one and a half months before election day (31 days of October and 15 days split between September and November, both of which are 30 days long).
That’s the logical answer, but since when did anything in this state at a political or governmental level make sense???
I guess I’m a contrarian. I don’t mind a two or three week early voting period, but 46 days is just nuts. Myself, I would consider it a disservice to democracy to vote early, unless I was going be out of town or had a scheduled surgery.
I’m not sure how an extended early voting period serves democracy. There should be some sort of balancing between the benefits of customer service that early voting provides and the benefits of an educated electorate that waiting until the end of a campaign provides.
I guess if you are going to follow a party line, no amount of education matters. You just get your cheat sheet from the party or special interest honchos and go vote. You might as well vote like corporate stock holders do and proxy your vote over to someone else. Sad.
I recall the time period was determined from concerns about getting ballots overseas and back to deployed soldiers. When they looked at prepping ballots for that early deployment, I think Chris Nelson and other sensible people said, Well, we’ve got the ballots, why not let everyone vote early if they want?
Donald Pay, as a county democratic chair, I saw for myself that we had plenty of time for help shut-ins or other folks vote early that would have had to navigate a busy election day polling place. It made for far less work helping people vote on election day. I was glad that we could help make voting less stressful for those voters.
Our county auditor also remarked that it made things easier on the end of the poll workers.
Until we have a mandatory holiday that makes it far easier for every single citizen to vote, I think we should definitely keep early voting. I don’t know if it needs to be as early as 46 days, but that’s the same time that absentee ballots are available, so it makes sense to keep it the same, because early voting is just voting with an absentee ballot.
Voting by mail solves all problems. Everyone should be allowed to vote by mail and/or, one fine day in America when smart people in competent states figure out how to accomplish 100% secure electronic signatures.
These solutions will not come from SD, ND, MT, ID or WY as no solutions to any significant problems ever come from any of these places.
Excellent point, Travis, about how extra voting time allows more time for your to serve your neighbors and help more people engage in the process. Keep up the good work.
Adam, you’re right: this Legislature seems determined not to solve much… although they may get hemp going.
Has nothing to do with any of the things bring discussed! Early voting is outrageous for ballot security and 46 days of it is insane. Too bad nobody was talking about the real and obvious problems of early voting.
Nothing to see here…move along…