Major reports on election reform have come out in the past few weeks from scholars at the California Institute of Technology and M.I.T., a commission led by former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and the Constitution Project of Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. Most reaction in the press has focused on the groups’ varying proposals that seem related to last fall’s Florida election, like eliminating punch-card voting machines; letting everyone who comes to the polls on Election Day vote, even though a lack of registration might disqualify ballots later; extending voting hours; and perhaps moving Election Day to a holiday or a weekend. Virtually unmentioned is something all three reports have in common: a concern about the explosion in voting that doesn’t involve going to the polls on Election Day.

Almost unnoticed last fall, in the frenzy over the close Florida results, was the startlingly large proportion of the votes in the presidential election—about 20 percent—that were cast by these alternative methods. All of Oregon’s ballots and more than 50 percent of those in Washington State were cast by mail, for example; more than 25 percent of votes were filed early in states like Tennessee and Texas; and nearly 25 percent of voting in California was by absentee ballot.

The trend is both clear and alarming. One-fifth of our voters voted well before Election Day—before we saw the candidates in action under the pressure of the final days of the campaign. They voted from a smaller base of knowledge than the rest of us had; it was the equivalent of deciding the winner of a basketball game at the end of the third quarter. Some of those voters, of course, could not get to the polls because of illness or travel, but this group is usually less than 5 percent of voters in any election.

Serious election fraud—through forgery, chicanery and badgering of voters—is all too possible when voters don’t go to the polls. Judges have nullified results because of fraud in absentee ballots, for example, in the Miami mayoral race of 1997 and in some local elections in the past decade in South Carolina.

Alternative voting also delayed some states’ 2000 election results—and with them, the overall result for the whole country. Waiting for ballots to arrive and verifying and counting millions of ballots takes time.

Many state secretaries of state and local election officials who were contacted by the Constitution Project brushed off or bristled at these criticisms. They focused instead on the convenience for voters of filling out a ballot at home and sticking an envelope in the mail, the economies of using fewer poll workers and voting machines, and an assumption—which the commissions on voting did not find to be borne out—that alternative voting enhances participation in elections. For election officials in Oregon and Washington, the belief in the efficacy of voting by mail has taken on almost religious significance.

But the consensus of the social scientists, political philosophers, elected officials and others on the commissions that studied voting is in the opposite direction. The National Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by Presidents Ford and Carter, said it was troubled by the trend toward mail voting, early voting in person and absentee voting without requiring an excuse. “Though this trend is justified as promoting voter turnout, the evidence for this effect is thin,” its report said. “Analysts have even noted the possibility that voter turnout in such states may eventually decline, as the civic significance of Election Day loses its meaning.”

The report from Caltech and M.I.T. recommends: “Restrict or abolish on-demand absentee voting in favor of in-person early voting.” And the Constitution Project report decries unlimited absentee balloting and votes by mail, strongly endorsing “the proposition that voting at the polls serves basic and historically rooted objectives” and adding: “The gathering of citizens to vote is a fundamental act of community and citizenship. It provides the greatest security for enabling voters to cast their ballots free of coercion. It facilitates prompt counting and verification of results.”

To many, anything that makes it easier for people to vote is automatically a good idea. It will be a Herculean task to reverse this kind of thinking, especially in the West. But we should be doing everything possible to keep alternative voting from expanding until Election Day becomes a meaningless time. As Congress and the states prepare to move on election reform, they should keep in mind the consensus view of every major panel that has examined this issue.