The election date is set years in advance. Shouldn't midnight that night be the last time ballots are accepted?

Question

Seriously, if we all know the election date is set, years before it ever comes about, what is the difficulty in setting a deadline of midnight the night of the election for having your ballot in?

It might even make more sense to set that deadline 72 hours ahead of time, in order to give individual polling stations plenty of time to count the votes.

This would certainly help to settle the issue as far as there being complaints about suspected fraud.

You can say whatever you want, watching people pulling bunches of boxes out from under a table, full of ballots, at 3 in the morning, of course that is going to raise suspicions.  With a little more foresight and making a rule like this, we could eliminate that speculation altogether!

KennyB · Accepted Answer

Polls generally close at 8 PM on ANY election day.  The thought being that anyone can make it to the polling place in that time, even if they can't get excused from work on election day.

Foofa · Answer

The election date shouldn't be set years in advance. This makes for constant campaigning and voter exhaustion. This is one way in which the parliamentary system is better.

Anonymous · Answer

Some people want to cast their ballot as late as possible because no one knows when significant news breaks.
In 2016, Comey closed the reopening of the Hillary email case unchanged 3 days before the election. Who knows how many people voted early using this as a factor w/ that investigation ongoing?

The election date is set years in advance. Shouldn't midnight that night be the last time ballots are accepted?

3 Answers