Nov 16, 2018 4 min read

Nine people who applied for absentee ballots by the appointed date but missed the deadline to return them have filed suit against the state, several top officials and Gov. Tom Wolf, alleging the current system disenfranchises qualified voters.

The action, brought on the individual plaintiffs’ behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, takes aim at what the suit calls an “unreasonably early deadline” for the ballots to be returned, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“There’s really no good reason those ballots have to be in on Friday (before the election),” Vic Walczak of the ACLU of Pennsylvania told the newspaper Tuesday. “They’re still counting ballots today.”

In our view, the Pennsylvania system has its flaws, but the plaintiffs in this lawsuit could have avoided being “disenfranchised” if they had simply not waited until the last minute to seek an absentee ballot and get it back in the mail – or deliver it by hand to an election office.

In the grand scheme of all things election, the dispute over Pennsylvania’s absentee ballot regulations is among the least of our concerns. One need only look at the election messes in Georgia and Florida to know that’s the truth.

Here are just a few ways we can improve efficiency and participation in our elections:

• Expand opportunities for mail-in voting. And, someday, when we can put the necessary protections in place to make sure Russians or anyone else can’t hack the system, allow Americans to vote electronically from the comfort of their homes. We can file our federal taxes and renew our auto registration on our computers, so why can’t we vote that way?
• Allow same-day registration, giving people the chance to register to vote on the same day they cast their ballots.
• In all instances, we should be making it easier for people to vote, not more difficult. Toward that end, we could automatically register people to vote when they turn 18, and we could stop culling them from the voting rolls if they miss a few elections.
• We also should look at changing the dates of our elections to condense the schedule and encourage participation. In this modern age, when information moves at the speed of light, we don’t need five or six months between primary and general elections. Why not move up the elections now held in November to sometime around Labor Day? Election turnout should not be dependent on whether people can slog through a snowstorm to cast their ballots. One side benefit is not having to hear and see so many political ads.
• Another option worth considering is moving elections to Saturdays, when it’s easier for more people to vote. Better yet, make national election days national holidays.
• Allow convicted felons to regain their voting rights. Once someone has paid his or her debt to society, they should regain their rights to participate in our elections.
• All states should be providing greatly expanded early voting opportunities, if for no other reason than to avoid the ridiculously long lines we see regularly at polling places. This would make any dispute over absentee ballots a moot point.

Contrary to the beliefs of some people, we’re a better country when more of us are involved in deciding who our leaders will be.