09/04/2026
It’s time to return to Election Day.
No more universal vote by mail or extended early voting. Both create significant financial and workload burdens for Clerks’ offices and election officials before, during, and on Election Day itself.
Does everyone realize what goes into processing these early and mail ballots?
Instead of a voter appearing at the polls and placing a ballot into the machine on Election Day, the Clerk’s office must track the request, issue and send the ballot, record its return, maintain custody of it, and then process and account for that ballot as part of the election.
All for convenience.
Clerks are also required to send mailings to voters offering vote-by-mail ballots. In a town with thousands of registered voters, those mailings alone can cost thousands of dollars each election cycle, before accounting for the additional staff time and administrative work.
Absentee voting should be reserved for those who genuinely need it – our military, the infirm, elderly voters, and others who cannot reasonably get to the polls.
Voting is important enough that, for most of us, showing up on Election Day should not be considered too much to ask. As a society, we’ve become accustomed to convenience while too often ignoring the cost and burden that convenience places on the people responsible for running our elections.
The continuing lawsuits and uncertainty surrounding mail ballots are yet another reason to simplify the process and return Election Day to its proper place at the center of our elections.
