This Tuesday's election contest in Arizona could determine whether anyone enters July's Republican National Convention with the delegate majority needed to clinch the the nomination.

Unfortunately, at least 40,000 Arizona Republicans wasted their votes. And they did so because of a system that is supposed to help them.

As of last Wednesday afternoon, at least a quarter million registered Republicans had already voted in Arizona, taking advantage of the state's 26-day early voting period. Based on the timeline, this means those 250,000 Arizona Republicans all voted without knowing Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would no longer be a candidate by election day.

A poll taken last week suggests that 16 percent of Arizona early voters had already cast ballots for Rubio. Assuming this is accurate, it means early voting disenfranchisement has struck again. Arizona's early voting law has set up the state's democratic process in a way that lures 40,000 primary voters into picking a candidate who isn't on the ballot. And they cannot get their votes back.

That 40,000 could easily be smaller than the difference in Tuesday's winner-take-all race.

This is not a constitutional issue, but it is one that policymakers should consider. It is just the latest example of how, at least in presidential primary elections, the drawbacks to early voting clearly outweigh the benefits.

Turnout for presidential primary elections is rarely heavy enough to justify the long early-voting periods that many states have in place. Except in Washington D.C., where there was literally just one polling place this year, there is usually no problem of unmanageably long lines. As we have argued before, it's past time for politicians and party officials to reform this problem. Right now, they are encouraging voters to make bad decisions on partial information.

The presidential primary season, unlike the various states' general election contests and even normal party primaries, are notoriously volatile. Because the presidential process contains a series of races in different places, candidates routinely quit without notice. That means early voters make themselves low-information voters. They are less informed than those who vote on election day, if only because they know who the actual candidates are.

Even in general elections, there is a good case to be made for having an election day, as prescribed by the Constitution, rather than many weeks during which people can vote. But the case for early voting is at least stronger in a general election than in a primary; it boosts overall participation and, if it is done fairly and provides equal acces, perhaps it outweighs the drawbacks.

But in primaries generally, and in Arizona in particular, early voting means many voters simply won't have their votes count at all.

And there are other detrimental effects on the process as well. In Florida, early voting meant Rubio could not drop out of the race when he should have without disenfranchising tens of thousands of Florida Republicans who voted for him early.

Republican Parties in the various states, and Republican legislators where their cooperation is required, must reform the voting process so that they aren't turning many voters' votes to ashes. This should reach the top of their list of priorities before the 2020 cycle begins.