Generically speaking, you're mostly correct. Early voting has its place as long as identification is provided during the early voting process and there is more than one witness to the validation of the identification.
Not ironically, before my first son was born in 1996 my now ex wife and I voted early because we knew if she didn't give birth by a specific date, the obstetrician had scheduled inducement on ... ELECTION DAY!
Village Clerk asked for ID which we provided and was also confirmed by a second party in the Village Clerks office. We also had to provide the reason we were early voting which happened to be readily apparent!
This bullshit around early voting (and voting early often by the looks of what happened last election) needs to be stopped period. Early voting itself however, does have a legitimate, proper place. The problem is it's been corrupted and it needs to be fixed. Fixed and LIMITED in application.
I think you may be talking about “absentee”. Those could be considered early AND mail-in. Also “provisional” (don’t get me going on that as I was forced to when they didn’t change my polling place when I moved).