Early voting disgraces in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado & Nevada

As I write this (at 4:30 am CT on 11/17/22), 5 states still haven't certified their elections. In fact, Alaska won't finish their election until the day before Thanksgiving. In Alaska, their disgrace is ranked-choice voting. In the other states, mail-in ballots are accepted up to a week after Election Day as long as it's postmarked by Election Day.

It's time to fix this national disgrace. While I'm a steadfast believer in federalism's laboratories of democracy, I'm also a firm believer in believer in best practices. It's time to limit early voting to in-person voting with a few limited exceptions for mail-in balloting. It's also time to require photo IDs for voting. Without Photo ID, we're stuck using the honor system. More on that later, though.

It's time to change laws that permit ballots to arrive a week after the election. That's the definition of absurdity. If you want results that are accepted, it's essential that votes don't keep trickling in a week after the election. 

One solution is to require that mail-in voting end a week before the election. Couple that with requiring that the votes get counted before Election Day. Another solution is to go with in-person voting as much as possible. Yet another solution is to not allow voters who don't properly fill out their ballots to fix their improperly filled-out ballots after the fact.

If they went with early in-person voting, that would solve most issues. That's what should be the goal. Finally, it's time to scrap the honor system. It's time for a nationwide photo ID requirement. A high percentage of Democrat politicians oppose photo ID. They are a tiny percentage of people, though. Poll-after-poll shows photo ID is wildly popular. It's time for Democrats to quit preventing clean elections.