I voted 26 times this week. That’s too much.

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2) Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). I voted! I almost always vote on Election Day, at my local polling place, even though here in San Antonio we’re now allowed to vote anywhere in the county. This year, however, I was more eager to avoid the lines during a pandemic, and so when my internet went down on Wednesday I went off to the polls early. It took me a few tries, and I wound up standing in a longer line than I probably would have had I waited. It took 40 minutes from the moment I got in line to when I put my completed ballot in the machine (we now have touch-screen voting that creates a paper ballot, a nice improvement). Four of those minutes were devoted to actual voting. One of the reasons the U.S. has such long lines at the ballot box is because we make voters do a lot more than what those in other democracies do. I voted 26 times Wednesday — national, state, and local offices, executive and legislative and judicial. There would’ve been more, but nine offices were uncontested (and in a sign of major change over the past few years, only one of those was Republican-only). Twenty-two choices were easy ones, even if the offices themselves get a little obscure, because they’re partisan elections and so voters can just vote by party. One, for school board, was non-partisan, which required some more advanced prep. And then there were three city ballot measures, which required some work as well. Not a lot — our mayor supported all three, and I like the mayor, so I voted “yes” — but, all in all, there was a fair amount of research required. Plus, this was my third election of the year, the sixth one of the two-year cycle, and the 12th of the four-year cycle. There would’ve been one or two more, but some got consolidated because of the virus. I wound up casting 70 votes this year, 83 over the two-year cycle, and a whopping 228 votes over the four-year cycle since the 2016 general election. That’s far more, over just four years, than regular voters in many democracies will cast in a lifetime of perfect turnout. That’s too much! I do like the long U.S. ballot and frequent elections, but still: We ask voters to either do way too much work or to risk being alienated from the experience. If it were up to me, I’d eliminate all judicial elections, scrap all voter-sponsored ballot measures, at least at the statewide level, and reduce the number of executive offices to vote for. Empower mayors and county executives and governors to select more officials, and then I can at least try to hold them responsible without having to also determine how I feel about the occupants of dozens of other offices. Ballots would still be relatively long, but at least the process would be somewhat more manageable. Jennifer Victor has a nice piece about the [virtues of voting]( despite a realistic understanding of the limits of the ballot. My view is that voting is training-wheels democracy: It’s the easiest, and at the individual level the least consequential, democratic act. But it’s also good practice for other forms of participation. Voting doesn’t only teach us about parties and candidates and offices. It also teaches us about democratic frustration (just because you turn out to vote doesn’t mean you get what you want) and about the paradox of individual participation (one vote really is almost never enough to do anything, but collectively voting makes a huge difference). Both of those lessons, in turn, clarify the realities of democratic politics — the true diversity of opinion and interest within the electorate, and the complex relationship between individual and group action. And that’s useful preparation for electioneering, or interest-group lobbying, or organized protests, or any other kind of political action. It isn’t true that every activist begins with a vote. But that’s often how it starts. 1. Elizabeth N. Saunders at the Monkey Cage on [foreign policy and the 2020 elections](. 2. Also at the Monkey Cage: Susan Liebell on [originalism](. 3. Alison Dagnes at Mischiefs of Faction on [Trump as a comedian](. 4. John Sides on [optimists, pessimists and the pandemic](. 5. Dave Hopkins [on the debate](. 6. Ezra Klein on [the 2020 election and democracy](. 7. Jonathan Cohn on [Trump’s fictional health-care plan](. 8. Adam Serwer on [democracy and the courts](. 9. Bloomberg’s Shawn Donnan on [Trump and offshoring](. 10. And Larry Levitt on [pre-existing conditions](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. 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