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Commentary By Stephen Eide

Should Voting Be Easy?

The idea that voting should be easy is appealing for two reasons. First, there’s a shameful history in America of deliberately making voting hard to disenfranchise certain groups. Second, making voting easier seems likely to make more people vote.

But voting shouldn’t be as easy as ordering something on Amazon. In-person voting builds trust in the system. Distrust in our electoral system’s legitimacy is a much more serious civic problem than less-than-perfect voter turnout. It would get worse if we made voting easier. Having to show up at a poll station may seem like a drag, but most people will see that system as less vulnerable to hacking
and manipulation than voting online or mail-in ballots.

Continue reading the entire piece here at New York York Times Upfront

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Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.

This piece originally appeared in New York Times Upfront