I had these same thoughts about these same things: I worried about the influence of those "squigglies," and when I found out states were reporting votes early, I thought that was dangerous too.

The problem is, how do you prevent them? Do you make a rule that with a live presidential debate, you can only broadcast the camera recording of the debate? Maybe that works.

I happen to like early voting -- for its convenience. But I still don't like exit polls or any other tallies before the polling stations close. Maybe you can make a law that you can't tell anyone how you actually voted until after the election. This seems quite restrictive, but the govt can choose its enforcement, the idea being to prevent news orgs from polling people about their votes, else they abet in the law-breaking.

Fortunately I am so nearsighted that I can't make out the squiggly dial lines on the television screen during the debates. The mortal peril in which I stand of being unduly influenced by CNN's dial twisters is thereby kept at bay, at least until my next prescription update.

A couple of ideas for CNN: people already biased toward one candidate or another might distort the squigglys deliberately by twisting their dials one way for their favored candidate's talking points and the other way for the other candidate's. There is no way to prevent that from happening with the dials. However, if it were possible to attach electrodes to people's heads and monitor their brain waves, pre-debate bias would be easier to control for. Drugging members of the focus group with sodium pentathol might work too.

It might also be fun to set up a squiggly for one of CNN's regular newscasts, just to see what happens to the lines every time Wolf Blitzer uses the phrase "the best political team on television."

Voting day fixes are certainly desirable, but they seem harder to do than allowing alternative improvements like early voting. Particularly for general elections which involve national coordination to fix.

So while the civics aren't quite as good, I'll take low hanging fruit until I can get something better.

They really need to have the election take place on a day when everybody really CAN go down and chill for a while at the local polling place. I've always though voting should take place on sunday (preferably sunday afternoon), before sunday night football but after morning church. Or at least on a saturday.

In any case, Dan you're not REALLY old until you get a chance to shout "Goddamn kids get off my lawn!"

I like Tuesday voting, I just wish we could make it a national holiday.

I agree, however, with Greg. Early voting seems a much easier way to address some of the issues that we encounter on election day. Far less investment in machines is required -- spreading voting out over a period of days means the same machine can be better utilized. It also means that someone with a conflict on election day can still cast a vote.

As an aside, voting behind a curtain with a pure secret ballot isn't exactly how it was always done. Early elections in the US, well into the 19th century, were done by a party ticket (drop the ticket with your preferred candidates on it in the box).

All that being said, my wife and I like to take our kids with us to vote on election day. I like that my four-year old sees city hall in my relatively small suburb and tells people, "that's where we go vote." Ok, in all honesty, I would like to vote early, also with my kids, but my wife, like Dan, says, "get off my lawn, err, I mean we only vote on election day!"

I'm guessing the prospect of online voting really freaks you out. I'm OK with the idea until I turn 40 next year.

I'm a quarter century older than Dan, but I like what my state, Oregon, does: all elections are by mail. Our turnout is generally above 80%, which means the vast majority of Oregonians do vote. I think that datum trumps Dan's fondness for the ritual of the voting booth.

I just filled out my absentee ballot in DC...or almost all of it. There are a few local races I know nothing about, and I read political blogs obsessively. After 30 minutes with google, I failed to find any info on these races: no candidate statements, no party affiliations, nothing. It will be a major effort to educate myself sufficiently to make an informed choice.

Having the ballot in hand motivated me to do this research. Do those of you that go vote on election day do all your research ahead of time and memorize it or take a cheat sheet?

i think both candidates should be hooked up to a lie dectector machine. and the results displayed at the bottom of the screen.

After 4 years of trolling Daniel Drezner . com I can finally say I hundred percent agree. I wasn't against the rise of postal voting not so much for the this collective voting thing or even for the potential for fraud which I can see being high. But I see voting as a civic ritual. In my precinct it is one of the only times you really see a whole bunch of the neighborhood together.

I will agree with grisjuan, you gotta do your sample ballot ahead of time and bring it with. And boy, sometimes its really hard to choose who to vote for in the county water commissioner race.

Good point about those dials. Frank Luntz, who does this stuff on Fox, likes to brag that it's never wrong.

After the VP debate, Frank confidently asserted there would be a swing back to McCain in the polls by the following Tuesday.

Needless to say, the polls didn't start to swing back until Joe the Plumber. Go figure.

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