Why Voting In Person Matters for America’s Civility

Call me quaint or “weird,” but I miss Election Day.

No, not specifically this Election Day, but that one singular day on which all of America has to go to specific locations in their community, look their neighbors in the eye, and cast their ballots.

Looking each other in the eye matters.

Go ahead. Call me old-fashioned. But it’s harder to rob, cheat, and generally vote pain upon your neighbor when you’re forced to look them in the eye while checking the box.

All this cycle, I’ve tried to remind people that politics is not something academic, it is something you do to other people.

Voting is not just some glorious act of “choosing leaders” or “exercising your right.” Voting is a declaration of the types of laws you wish to inflict on other living, breathing people. Why not look your neighbor in the eye while you vote to “make him pay his fair share,” or whatever other slogan is used to strip rights away this election cycle.

Of course, there are the EMTs who work 72 hours straight, families traveling, students abroad, and any number of valid reasons why we should allow for absentee ballots. We need to make allowances for these cases. I vote in Mississippi, where, for a full month prior to an election, anyone can cite any number of reasons to vote absentee.

I’ll be honest, I probably vote absentee as often as I do in person. According to MIT’s election lab, over 40 percent of Americans voted either early or by mail in 2016, and 50 percent did so in 2022. (We’ll exclude the anomalous 2020 COVID election).

There are actually states that just mail out ballots en masse.

Voting is — and should be — a secret ballot, but it is still a public act with public consequences. It is a community act with community results. Part of democracy is realizing that your vote has consequences for your neighbor. And while we can’t decide everything by a show of hands at a town hall meeting, the community forum aspect of voting is so important that I’ll go out on a limb and say that mail-in voting and early ballots are, quite frankly, undemocratic.

Want to make rhetoric in America more civil? Let’s start by having one Election Day. Make people look each other in the eyes at the polling precinct. It won’t solve everything, but it would be one glorious step.

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