Election officials in the Republican-leaning states where early voting is most widely used endorse the practice, despite attempts by GOP lawmakers during the 2012 election to curtail it.
Twenty-one state and local election officials who have overseen early voting in states such as Utah, Florida and Texas said early voting has multiple benefits. It reduces the lengths of lines on election day, eases stress on voting apparatus and poll workers, and can reveal glitches in the voting system in time to fix them.
Those and other benefits are detailed in a new Brennan Center for Justice report that makes seven recommendations for state early voting laws. The report focuses on early in-person voting [EIPV], as opposed to absentee voting or voting by mail.
Early voting can particularly improve participation among minority voters, the report finds. The tightening of early voting laws in Florida between the 2008 and 2012 elections, for example, led to a decline in participation by black voters, who "used early voting at much higher rates than whites."
"Preliminary post-election research found minority voters shouldered an unequal share of the reduced [early in-person voting] opportunities," according to report author Diana Kasdan, senior counsel at the Brennan Center. Kasdan flags an Orlando Sentinel finding that 201,000 Florida voters on election day 2012 gave up over frustration with long lines. A separate MIT study found that black voters waited an average of 23 minutes to vote in the 2012 elections, compared with 12 minutes for white voters and 19 minutes for Hispanic voters.
"Florida’s 2012 voting problems, many of which stemmed from curtailing [early in-person voting], were so evident, and so widely criticized, that Florida lawmakers voted six months later to lengthen the allowable EIPV period," Kasdan writes.
The holding by the supreme court in June that part of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional appears to have opened the way to a new wave of state laws that seek to suppress voting, however. Republican-led legislatures in North Carolina and Texas passed laws after the Shelby County v Holder ruling that restricted early voting and instituted onerous new voter-ID requirements.
The Brennan Center reports that the practical experience of election officials in those states contradicts the action of the legislators.
"I don’t know that we can do elections without early voting anymore," Karen Brinson, director of elections of Transylvania County, North Carolina, is quoted as saying. "I really can’t even begin to think of the disadvantages. From an administrative side, it’s just amazing how much more effective it is.”
The report makes recommendations for states including a full two-week early voting period before election day; weekend voting; minimum daily hours at voting centers; both public and private voting locations; and greater voter education.