Don't rush changes in early voting

The phrase "every vote counts" might not be ringing true with some who cast ballots in the Feb. 5 primary. That's because the candidate they favored wound up saying to their vote, thanks, but it really wasn't necessary.

Thousands of people took advantage of early voting to support Democrat John Edwards and Republican Rudolph Giuliani in their respective presidential primaries. But one day before early voting ended -- Jan. 30 -- both Edwards and Guiliani dropped out. Meaning early votes cast by then had no bearing in the outcome of the presidential nomination races in Illinois.

Were those votes wasted? That's a bit harsh. Voters still might feel they voted in good conscience for Edwards and Guiliani, and that's good enough for them.

And although early voters with an inclination toward Edwards and Guiliani could not predict that their candidate would withdraw from the race, they nonetheless had to have some idea that their candidate was not going to prevail in Illinois, or down the road. Both campaigns were in trouble. Edwards was far behind Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the presidential campaign came to Illinois. And Giuliani was banking on the iffy prospect of winning the Florida primary to lift his election hopes.

State lawmakers ought to keep all this in mind as they consider extending the deadline for early voting to the day before elections, a change that could impose new financial and technical burdens on county clerks and election commissions.

Moreover, in most cases early voters did not find their candidates of choice dropping out of contested campaigns. It wasn't true in the majority of races for Congress, state legislature, and judicial and county offices in the Feb. 5 primary. Most contestants for local elected offices in last year's election were still in the running at the time early voting came to an end.

After a shaky start, early voting has apparently become more popular. An estimated 300,000 voters took advantage of early and absentee voting in the Feb. 5 primary, compared to the 170,000 who early-voted in 2006, when this option was first made available. Early voting has also gone fairly smoothly, and without an eruption of voter fraud that some feared would occur by allowing people to cast ballots in advance of the regularly scheduled Election Day.

Certainly some early-voters for Edwards and Giuliani are disappointed. But we would hope that the failure of two campaigns to survive until Feb. 5 would not serve as a huge disincentive to early vote in all future elections. If anything, it should motivate early voters to think more about the long-term prospects of a candidate's campaign.

If moving up the deadline for early voting can be done without incurring great additional expense and complicating the recording and reporting of votes, then early voters should receive this benefit. But don't make changes that protect voters from the possibility of their candidates dropping out of a race while creating a host of new problems.