134
Why is voting before the deadline in US elections referred to as 'early voting'?
(self.nostupidquestions)
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
134 points (92.9% liked)
No Stupid Questions
36136 readers
1119 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Same reason morning is earlier in the day than night. This is just how linear time works.
Right I get that.
But why is it marketed, for lack of a better term as early. Why wouldn't it be, 'the polls opens on October 20th, and you can vote late up to November 5th'
As somebody else mentioned, historically 99% of voting was done on election day. Opening the polling places earlier than that was the exception, and the terminology has simply stuck as the practice has expanded. Additionally, many jurisdictions have something materially different about voting early, whether different hours, looser location rules (I used to be able to early vote at any polling place in my county, but not now... thanks, Texas), etc., so it's useful to refer to distinguish them somehow.
Election Day is traditionally the day to vote, campaigns are still running before that point. Anyone who votes earlier does so with less information than later voters. Trump could say something stupid between now and Election Day, and wouldn't you feel bad if you'd already voted for him and couldn't take it back?
I mean, yes of course I would, but solely because I somehow voted for Trump.
Ha... you're right of course, but it's funny to consider this in the context of the exhaustingly long campaigns that are the status quo
Alternatively Harris could actually shoot someone on 5th Avenue, you never know
Depends on who she shoots!
Because humans tend to give things names based on their relation to prior naming conventions. As voting on election day, singular, was common for so long then everything else is in relation to that aingular day concept.
No, a more accurate name will not be adopted because people are used to the current terminology and knows what it means. Just like we won't switch 'daylight savings time' to 'daylight shifting time' even though that would be more accurate.
Once upon a time we had Election Day. The polls were open for one day. Election Day, Nov 5, is still a thing, in the modern era they can tabulate votes fast enough to call the election that night. The practice of opening the polls before Nov 5 is called early voting. It's basically that simple.
In my state, the local polling stations only open on Election Day, to vote early you have to go to a government building up at the county seat where they have one voting center open, so there is a practical difference.
Why would it be? Election day is November 5th.
Is that how you think about your bills?
"Your rent can be paid on the 10th, and you can pay late up to the 31st"
Historically the polls don’t open until the 5th, and as far as I’m aware, the votes aren’t counted until then even if they are submitted early.
When it was first added, early voting was not meant to be the way most people voted- it was meant to accommodate people who for one reason or another couldn’t make it to the polls that day.
It’s become increasingly more common as more people find out about it.