Eric Hartley: Early voting: The latest fake outrage

To hear the sputtering opposition to an early voting referendum in Maryland, you'd think this was the first state to consider such a concept.

It must be some crackpot idea cooked up by the Democrats in power, a shady way to draw more votes for their candidates - probably from dead people or, worse, illegal immigrants!

In fact, 31 states already allow any voter to cast ballots in person before Election Day and four other states allow early voting with a reason, according to the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon. They include the Democratic strongholds of Vermont and California; Republican-dominated Texas and Utah; and Arizona and Alaska, the respective home states of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin.

Question 1 on the Maryland ballot would amend the state constitution to allow voting up to two weeks prior to Election Day.

Yet the Maryland Republican Party establishment is uniformly against it, including the House and Senate minority leaders who have argued, respectively, that it's "ripe for fraud" and could "jeopardize the integrity of our elections merely for the purpose of convenience."

Republicans say they're protecting the integrity of democracy. Democrats offer a different explanation: Making it easier to vote increases turnout among young people and minorities, who are more likely to vote Democratic.

"The Republicans know that the more people who vote, the more Republicans lose," said David Paulson, a spokesman for the Maryland Democratic Party. "That's why they're against early voting. That's why they're shouting fraud, because they can't explain their failure" to connect with voters.

State GOP Chairman Jim Pelura said it is about politics, but in a different way.

"I don't trust the guys in Annapolis," he told me. "I don't trust them to do the right thing."

The "guys in Annapolis," of course, are Gov. Martin O'Malley and the leaders of the General Assembly, all of whom are Democrats. Dr. Pelura, a veterinarian from Davidsonville, said passing the referendum would give Democrats a "blank check" to design early voting.

Dr. Pelura rejected the idea that it's about suppressing Democratic turnout and said he has no problem with early voting as long as there are safeguards such as a photo identification requirement and a bipartisan selection of sites.

He said, for example, Democrats could decide to put the early voting sites only in Democratic bastions like Prince George's County.

He was kidding, I think. But for the record, a 2006 early voting bill included three sites in each large county, including Anne Arundel, and one in each smaller county, generally in the county seat or largest town. The number of precincts open on Election Day will not change.

Joe Torre, the election director for Anne Arundel, said early voting would provide no more opportunity for fraud than there is now, with existing safeguards that include checks of identification and addresses when people register in person.

Indeed, he said it would lessen the rush on Election Day and take some of the pressure off election judges.

Think about this: What's a bigger problem in the United States? People actually casting ballots who aren't registered (which, despite the outcries and shenanigans about people writing in the name "Mickey Mouse," almost never happens)? Or people by the hundreds of thousands - disproportionately poor, black and Democratic - being improperly barred from voting?

"These allegations of voter fraud are unfounded, and the Republicans have been screaming this left and right for years without any evidence whatsoever," Mr. Paulson said, adding that an ID requirement functions as a de facto "poll tax," since one has to pay to get a driver's license or state ID card.

And for some, it's an uncomfortable reminder of the voter intimidation of our not-too-distant Jim Crow past.

A bill allowing early voting passed the General Assembly in 2006, but an Anne Arundel County judge and the Court of Appeals ruled it violated this clause in the Constitution: "All general elections in this State shall be held on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November." The referendum amends the Constitution.

Dr. Pelura said early voting, a failure to require photo ID and other problems are "trivializing" voting in the United States.

"This is not a drive-through McDonald's," he said. "This is a serious business."

Ah, but Texas, which Dr. Pelura pointed to as a model for early voting because it requires people to show photo ID, even has "curbside voting." (Just like Applebee's curbside pickup!) That state's early voting pamphlet advises: "If you can drive or if you have a friend or relative who can drive you, you don't even have to get out of the car."

I guess the flip side of Dr. Pelura's McDonald's comparison is this: If we already do everything else from our cars - buy food, buy liquor, pick up prescription refills and even get flu shots - why not vote from them, too?