
Sunday “Souls to Polls” voting is legal in Virginia now? Impossible to predict which political party will benefit more from that.
by Steve Haner
With the 2021 General Assembly receding in the rear view mirror, the voting rules for this year’s Virginia elections are set. Republicans who are whining that the deck has been stacked are against them are making a mistake. Every change the Democrats see as a benefit to them is of equal benefit to Republicans.
If your locality is one of those that agrees to open the in-person early voting process on a Sunday, who is to say which churches will load up the buses and fill the line? Every conservative evangelical pastor can now set up a “Souls to Polls” drive, right after the sermon in which a candidate was carefully not endorsed. Why not?
One of the largest mistakes former President Donald Trump made a year ago was his clear message to discourage his own voters from using the no-excuse absentee or other early voting process in their states. He was seeking to manipulate a larger lead in the Election Day overnight counts, which we all knew would shrink or reverse once absentees were counted in the days that followed.
But standing in long lines in the pre-dawn cold is not fun. Add in a pandemic, and quite a few people intending to vote Republican would have greatly preferred the early- or absentee-voting method. Some who feared infection may have skipped voting because of Trump’s bad advice. Maybe many. Continue reading