Surely most DKos visitors are well aware that only 51% of the voting-age public participated in the 2000 election, and that barely more than one in three voters "did their duty" in the 2002 midterms. My fellow Kossaks probably also know that voter participation in the US has been sinking for almost 40 years and that the US voter participation percentage trails that of most countries (not just Europe or Japan) by 20 or more points. But do you know why we hold our elections on Tuesday?
The answer and proposed alternatives to this silly practice follow.
What I didn't learn in my High School government class or elsewhere, until yesterday, is the reason why the US is nearly the only country which holds elections in the middle of the week. From this
Federal Election Commission FAQ:
Why early November? For much of our history America was a predominantly agrarian society. Law makers therefore took into account that November was perhaps the most convenient month for farmers and rural workers to be able to travel to the polls. The fall harvest was over, (remembering that spring was planting time and summer was taken up with working the fields and tending the crops) but in the majority of the nation the weather was still mild enough to permit travel over unimproved roads.
Why Tuesday? Since most residents of rural America had to travel a significant distance to the county seat in order to vote, Monday was not considered reasonable as many people would need to begin travel on Sunday. This would, of course, have conflicted with church services and Sunday worship.
To me this is clearly a civic anachronism (sort of like the 2nd Amendment), badly in need of revision. The fact that some states provide limited time off on Election Day for either government and/or commerical workers, while some don't provide any time off (such as the home state of Jefferson, Madison, Bragan, etc.) also cries for attention.
Others, including Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Debbie Stabenow have called for making Election Day a national holiday. I say dream on. In our business first society, the Rethuglicans will couch their majority-saving rejection of that idea in terms of lost productivity, particularly if Election day remained on Tuesday rather than being moved to Monday or Friday. As suggested by this wingnut site, liberal slackers would simply treat an Election weekday national holiday as an excuse to goof off for an extra day or two.
This Atlantic article proposes making moving Veteran's Day to a November Monday observance (rather than the 11th) and moving Election Day to the day after, creating in a four-day weekend celebration of sacrifice and duty. Tempting, but I'm not sure it would make it past the Rethugs since you would still have to counter the lost productivity argument as well as the resistance to making not one, but two changes to the traditional November calendar.
My solution: simply move Election day to Saturday (retaining the agrarian tradition of following the first Monday in November). Yeah, lots of people would be confused about the change, even if a massive public service campaign was mounted, but nevertheless, I still think turnout would improve, and when you look at the demographics, that clearly works in our favor. What would be the Republican argument against moving Election Day from a weekday (where it interferes with a full-day's worth of productivity) to a weekend. conservatives fundamental aversion to change wouldn't cut it, as media talking point.
More on the moving Election Day, to include consideration of why other factors that depress voter turnout are more difficult to change.
