“Who Stole Election Day?” the Wall Street Journal asked in an opinion-page headline Wednesday.

And hey, look: Lewiston, Maine, was right there in the first sentence of an opinion column written by oh-so-nearly-elected-governor Eliot Cutler, who cites the story of a local woman who voted early and later wished she hadn’t.

While the headline was a bit over the top, Cutler makes some interesting points about the effect absentee voting — or, as he says, convenience voting — is having on elections and democracy.

In Maine, he says, absentee voting discourages voter engagement, props up dying political parties and undermines the election process.

There has been a decided shift in attitude toward absentee voting, once considered the way a small number of voters cast their ballots if they were in the military, traveling or too ill to go to the polls.

Now, any registered voter can obtain and file an absentee ballot 30 days prior to an election and without stating a reason.

In November, there were about 141,500 absentee ballots out of about 560,000 cast in the governor’s race, or about 25 percent of the total.

As we pointed out after the election, in a fast-changing race, those who vote too early may deprive themselves of an opportunity to vote strategically.

Some Democrats probably regretted voting early for Libby Mitchell who, by the end of the race, had faded badly as Cutler surged.

As the accompanying chart shows, however, nearly half of those absentee voters voted in the last week, and nearly a quarter of the ballots were received on Election Day or the day before.

But the real danger and difficulty with running as an independent is trying to gain name recognition and traction early in any race.

And that’s on account of the primary election system itself, not just absentee balloting.

The unenrolled candidates practically disappear from voters’ radar because they have no primary in June.

Republican Paul LePage and, to a lesser extent Mitchell, got a valuable early start thanks to their primary battles. LePage, in particular, was rocketed to the top of the pack by his stunning upset victory.

Cutler and fellow independents Kevin Scott and Shawn Moody, meanwhile, were practically invisible at the starting gate, and all had trouble moving the public opinion dial early in the campaign.

Absentee balloting probably does hurt independents. But it is the front-runner status conferred by the primary system that gives major party candidates the real advantage.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com