Voting 101

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Well, I guess all good things must come to an end. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to avoid the elections and eventual commentary, but it’s time I get back to those topics. Although, so you don’t worry about me, I didn’t go cold turkey altogether: We did have a political editor on the radio program right after to discuss the results and we interviewed our attorney general elect right after her upset victory.

So now, back to business — or “regular order” in political speak.

As you know from reading the last few columns I have a thing for Philadelphia. It was my family home, both my parents were born there and I spent a lot of time in my youth visiting relatives every summer. Love the athletic teams; its history; the Mummers; Automat, Horn & Hardart, and the Eagle at Wanamaker’s.

So it is not unusual for me to follow Philly politics and that includes statewide races for governor, senator, and president. Thus I took more than a glancing look at this year’s Senate contest and from it I have developed some ideas about what is wrong with our elections.

But first let’s refresh our memories and take a quick look back at the 2020 results. During that election, many states and local jurisdictions made several administrative changes in their election procedures that they claimed were necessary due to the severity of the pandemic. Many of those changes, such as unattended ballot drop boxes, as well as questionable early voting and mail-in voting procedures, were blamed for some major irregularities that infected that election and caused the ruckus afterward.

Many of these were highlighted in Mollie Hemingway’s 2021 book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, and Dinesh D’Souza’s 2022 film, 2000 Mules, among others.

As a consequence, many states have revised their voting laws to curb abuses and to provide safer, more trustworthy elections. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania legislature was among those states that tried to make corrections in its election laws to curb some of the abuses that were found, but Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it.

Since to me, Pennsylvania is a poster-child for how not to do things, I think it is interesting to look into some of its problems to see what might be learned from it.

Of course one of the first things we notice from the state results was that the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, John Fetterman, suffered a stroke during his primary and was never truly cognitive throughout the campaign. Now, as a stroke victim myself, I can sympathize with the man wanting to return to his profession (he was the sitting lieutenant governor) as quickly as possible.

So how could this man be elected especially after the debate performance he turned in gave lie to his party’s claim that the effects of the stroke were no barrier to his service in the Senate?
The easy answer, of course, is that early voting in the state began some 50 days before Election Day. Now one of the oldest chapters in the political playbook deals with off-site voting: Those ballots that are cast outside the view of election officials.

For as long as states administered elections, political operatives have tried to obtain as many of these early ballots as possible. Several methods are used, but the result is the same for all: bag enough early votes — by hook or by crook — and you’ll already have a nice lead before the Election Day itself. Some states even allow political apparatchiks to gather those early ballots and return them to designated receptacles.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the mischief this could play in a close election. Unfortunately for the Republicans, they emphasize voting in person on Election Day and they haven’t quite caught up with the Democrats’ playbook here. However, I suspect they will and will actually be better at that game than the Dems. Of course when that happens everyone will decide that it is time to play the game without all the early voting.

Of course it should be noted that there are many valid reasons for early voting — illness, business travel, armed forces, etc. so there should be a safe method to conduct it. But obviously there needs to be better time constraints. There is no logical reason for a 50-day period. Ten days to two weeks is surely enough.

But along with that we should be discouraging as much of the mail-in voting as possible. The solution, during this early voting period, is satellite stations, manned by election officials where voters can go to cast early ballots in person. Now a central station, opened normal business hours at the local courthouse, can easily fill the bill. Outlying stations can be placed in libraries, city halls, and other public places and do not need to be open every day for business hours. A library booth might, for example, be open only on Wednesday mornings and Monday afternoons.

Thus early voters could be channeled into “official” stations where IDs could be checked and normal procedures for in-person voting could be used as would be done on the actual day of election.

Now my next suggestion is this: Close early voting on the Friday before the election. Then, over the weekend, all the early votes cast — that will come in secured envelopes validated by election officials — can be sorted into their proper precincts and on Monday they should be delivered to the individual precinct where the voter would have voted. The morning of the election, before the polls are open to the public, judges and partisan observers could open the envelopes and put the ballot through the tabulation machines for that precinct. Thus ending the horrific delay in producing election results while waiting for the “early” votes to be counted.

Now those that have been mailed into the election office can be signature and ID verified by normal election officials, along with partisan observers, verified, placed back into their envelopes, and delivered to the proper precincts with the others.

My idea here is to limit the number of people who must touch each ballot. Normally only the poll worker who hands out the ballot and the voter touch the ballot before it is placed into the tabulation machine. Under my plan that would only increase by one more person if mail-in or early ballots are treated as I am suggesting.

Additionally, under this proposal the authentication of early ballots would be much easier since it would be done normally at satellite venues and in the election office for mail-in ballots. And by voting those ballots in the voter’s home precinct, it should eliminate the delay in tabulating all results and eliminate those hazy boxes full of unidentified ballots that just happen to show up overnight.

Fortunately many states use many of these procedures already, but it would be nice to have a uniform ballot protection law that could mandate this throughout the nation. Of course it would also require that the practice of ballot harvesting be banned in every state.

The only other matter to correct is to reinforce the constitutional requirement that only the state legislature may regulate the “times, places, and manner of holding elections” [Art.1 Sec. 4] for Congress. That was generally ignored by some states and local officials in 2020 as they tried to tailor new rules to “concerns” over the pandemic.

That, however, will probably be done in the Supreme Court’s new term as it has agreed to hear a reapportionment case from North Carolina, Moore v. Harper, which deals with the same constitutional provision. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for December 7.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday on Faith On Trial at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/.)