If you live in North Carolina, you could vote in the presidential election as early as this weekend.
County elections boards in the Tar Heel State will begin sending mail ballots Friday, allowing some voters to make their choices on everything from their local school board to the next president eight weeks before Election Day.
Republicans have turned their fire on early voting in recent years. Former President Donald Trump, in particular, has repeatedly called for elections to have just one day of voting while making baseless claims about vote-by-mail.
Those claims have been thoroughly debunked. But often lost in the rebuttals of attacks against early voting has been the affirmative case for early voting, including both vote-by-mail and in-person voting before Election Day.
Only three states currently don’t have either no-excuse vote-by-mail or early in-person voting.
So I’m going to make it here. I’m something of an early-voting hipster, having gotten into it in Oregon back in the 1990s — you know, before it went all mainstream. Now it’s everywhere. In fact, only three states currently don’t have either no-excuse vote-by-mail or early in-person voting: Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire.
Many Republicans have soured on vote-by-mail due to Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which is unfortunate. But over the last four years, Republican states such as Kentucky and South Carolina have embraced early in-person voting, which offers many of the same advantages and avoids MAGA’s wrath.
Before going further, let’s make one thing very clear: Early voting will not help your favorite candidate win or the other side lose.
We now have years of research that shows that allowing early voting either by mail or in-person most likely has little effect on turnout in big-ticket races like a presidential election. (It may help boost turnout in off-year elections for city council and such, however.) And it doesn’t seem to offer any permanent advantage to either Democrats or Republicans.
So you shouldn’t support early voting because you think it will give your side a tactical boost — and you shouldn’t oppose it because you fear it will help the other side.
Instead, you should support it because early voting is great. Here are just some of the reasons.
In terms of modern conveniences, early voting is up there with the ATM, the drive-thru fast-food restaurant and the 24-hour gym.
Early voting is convenient. Allowing people to cast a ballot on a day other than just one particular Tuesday in November helps people who work long hours, take care of young kids or otherwise have busy lives. In terms of modern conveniences, it’s up there with the ATM, the drive-thru fast-food restaurant and the 24-hour gym.
It helps election workers. Local elections officials are like Santa’s elves: They work all year to ensure that one day goes off smoothly. Spreading out voting over several days or weeks helps lighten that load and gives them a chance to work out problems when they aren’t on a tight deadline.








