ROGER KIMBALL: Republicans need to figure out mail-in voting: It’s being used by Democrats to influence the course of elections.

What was the determinative fix in the 2022 midterm elections? Early, mostly mail-in, voting. It is perfectly legal. But it undermines a fair and open electoral process. Were I a Democrat, I might even say that it “threatens our democracy.” Why? Because it allows for the wholesale manipulation of the vote. It also dilutes the integrity of an election by transforming it from an event into a process.

I should add that “mail-in ballots” is an equivocal term. It can mean different things in different contexts and in different states. The practice is obviously open to more interference and manipulation than same-day voting is. So extra safeguards must be put in place and scrupulously followed if such interference and manipulation is to be avoided. Some states do this. Florida is a good example. Other states do not. Apparently, about 1.4 million people asked for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Around the same number voted early by mail in Arizona, compared to just shy of half a million on Election Day. Were all such ballots carefully checked to ascertain the identity and eligibility of the person casting the vote?

I doubt it, but let’s leave that question to one side. The real issue is that the wholesale practice of early or mail-in voting makes a mockery of elections. If you say that an election is to be held on November 8, but millions of ballots are already docketed, if not actually counted, by the time November 8 rolls around, why bother to have Election Day at all? Why not have Election Week, or Election Month, or Election Quarter?

Elections are meant to represent a particular decision made at particular time at which voters can assess the state of things at that moment and make their choice. Early and mail-in voting undermines the definitiveness of that practice. I suspect that in many cases the result of an election is essentially predetermined by early and mail-in voting, something that makes the very idea of Election Day superfluous.

Indeed, and that’s the ultimate goal.