Weigel

A Democrat and a Republican Joined a Commission to Reform Elections. What They Did Next Will Amaze You.

Not really, but I figured an Upworthy headline was the best way of drawing attention to the report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a blue/red-ribbon project that’s wrapped up work one year and one day after the second Obama inaugural. This, for example, is something of a departure from the GOP’s 2012 dogma.

In order to limit congestion on Election Day and to respond to the demand for greater opportunities to vote beyond the traditional Election Day polling place, states that have not already done so should expand alternative ways of voting, such as mail balloting and in-person early voting.

In North Carolina and Florida, to name two states that Republicans have taken over recently, early voting has either been pulled back or limited on the Sundays before Election Day. No one’s found a smoking gun to prove that this was done to limit black votes, but it clashed directly with a program by black churches to drive voters from the pews to the ballot box—“souls to the polls.” What Republicans might now realize is that their voters are also religious, and might also take advantage of programs like these.