7 reasons NJ’s multiple voting days make it easier to cheat

Before 1845, there was no such thing as a single Election Day in America. Each state just did its own thing. Some voted in October, some in December, and the whole process could drag on for weeks. In certain towns, people voted whenever they could make it into the center of town — sometimes days apart from their neighbors.

It is chaos. Results would leak early, giving later states a peek at who was “winning.” Every place had its own rules, its own ballots, even its own timing. People shouted their votes out loud, and others scribbled them on paper.

So in 1845, Congress finally stepped in and said, “Enough.” They picked one day — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November — to make it official for federal elections. And that one-day system worked. Until now. For reasons only assumed by many, but never fully understood, we now have a new system.

We’ve got early voting, we’ve got a couple of days of it. We’ve got election day. We’ve got mail-in voting. We’ve got absentee voting. Sure, giving people more time to vote sounds great. But stretching Election Day into Election Week just opens the door for mistakes. Here’s how:

1. Ballot Handling Gets Messy

When polls stay open for days, ballots have to be stored, moved, and tracked over and over. That’s when things get lost, damaged, or mixed up.

2. Voter Confusion Sets In

People start asking, “Wait, is today my day?” or “Can I vote again if I already did?” When the process drags on, the rules get blurry.

3. Staff Changes Mean Different Rules

Poll workers rotate. One group might be stricter with ID checks, another might not be. A little inconsistency here, a little there, and it adds up.

4. Machines Don’t Always Keep Up

The longer computers run, the more chances they have to glitch. Systems crash, data doesn’t sync, and suddenly, no one’s sure what’s been counted.

5. Ballots on the Move

Every night, ballots are stored or transferred. That’s extra handling, and every handoff is a chance for error. Or a chance for tampering.

6. Everyone’s Tired

Election workers pulling long shifts for several days? Mistakes are bound to happen. Fatigue makes people sloppy, and sloppiness isn’t what you want when counting votes.

Read More: What early mail-in voting trends reveal about NJ elections

7 Mail-In Ballots Add More Steps

Yes, mail-in voting is still around, and New Jersey has it. It’s convenient, but every extra step is another chance for error. Ballots have to be filled out perfectly, signed in the right spot, postmarked on time, and received by the deadline. One wrong move, like late delivery, missing signature, or wrong envelope, and that vote’s out. Multiply that by thousands, and it’s easy to see how “helpful” systems can turn into headaches.

Third World countries with banana republics have figured out how to vote on one day and one day only. And America has done it for almost 200 years. There’s no good reason to change it unless you want to allow dishonest people to be able to manipulate the vote their way.