Question

US GOVERNMENT Q

Think about how federalism impacts elections: should every state retain control over their own elections or should it be a standardized process across all states? State your opinion and give at least 3 reasons (from current events) to support why you think elections should remain in state control OR why you think elections should be uniform across the entire country.

Answer 1

I believe that the states should not control their elections and it should be a centralized process. This is because of the following 3 main reasons-

• Less change of fraud- Recently the fears of fraud, especially with mail-in voting, have been very high. Both parties are accusing each other fraud, especially in states where the other party is controlling the government. A centralized process will make sure that the process is standard and hence lesser fraud possibility. Also, if the state is not involved at all- there will be very little reason to blame it.
• Lesser gerrymandering- Gerrymandering has been a serious issue, where one party- especially the one currently in power, tries to alter the boundaries of districts in such a way that results in reduction of power of likely voters of other party. Because districts delineation etc are powers of the state, its desirable for the states to not hold their elections so as to have fewer reasons for gerrymandering. A recent example of gerrymandering would be Virginia where a lot of blames were being put regarding it.
• Less confusion- Once again, the current confusion surrounding mail-in voting shows that not having same rules across all places create huge issues. Different states have different rules for mail-in voting and that is resulting in severe confusions. They have different forms, different envelopes and people are not able to find correct rules over internet easily either.

Because of the above reasons, I feel that it makes more sense to have a centralized election process rather than state control.