Jonah Goldberg: Calif. primary shows why early voting bad idea

Now will someone listen? Early voting is stupid.

Under California’s new election protocols, as many as 40% of California voters voted early, either by mail or at voting centers, for the March 3 primary. And what about those who cast ballots for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer? Their votes simply won’t count. As the Los Angeles Times reported, almost half of the 20 Democrats whose names appear on the California primary ballot have pulled out of the race.

But that’s only the most obvious problem with this infernal fad that puts convenience above citizenship. Early voting also makes strategic voting more difficult. Say you voted for Elizabeth Warren a month ago, on the first day of early voting. It’s not that you loved her; it’s just that you thought she’d be a better general election candidate. Well, it was a vote wasted — and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Or let’s say you’re an anyone-but-Biden or anyone-but-Bernie voter. If you voted for someone who subsequently dropped out, you may have helped the candidate you were trying to thwart.

Or imagine that you like Bernie’s overall message, and you voted for him on the first day you could. Then, in the last month, more came out about his support for authoritarian regimes, and now you’re horrified. Well, too bad.

Early voting in primaries is a particularly egregious idea because it makes it more difficult for a party to choose the best or most unifying candidate. Still, only a handful of states have resisted the trend.

The idea was born from widespread elite disgust over America’s low voter turnout. Progressives in particular embraced the idea because many believed that if everyone voted, the left would sweep elections. That premise is flawed.

It’s true that voting earlier lowers the “price” of participating in an election in terms of time and inconvenience. But that also means it cheapens the vote, which means people value it less.

Voter participation rates have long been seen as a good measure of civic commitment. When voting becomes easier, however, more people vote who are less engaged in politics.

If we allowed people to text their vote from their phones, we’d certainly have much greater voter participation, but would the quality of our voters improve?

Just as important: Would the quality of our candidates improve? Or would we make it just a little — or a lot — easier for celebrities and demagogues to sweep to power based on name recognition or cheap pandering to the un- and under-informed?

No journalist would file a report predicting election results a month before the vote — things are just too in flux at that point. But for some bizarre reason, we think it’s a great idea for voters to blindly cast their ballots up to 46 days before they’re due. This is particularly nuts in primaries. At least in a general election, you have some degree of confidence who the candidates are and what the parties stand for.

There is room for some reform. You could make Election Day a national holiday — or, for primaries, a state holiday. Turning Election Day into Election Weekend has some merit as well.

Some things are worth making as easy as possible, like flu shots. That’s because the convenience of getting vaccinated doesn’t change the efficacy of the vaccine. Voting doesn’t work that way.