Recently I put forward a fairly radical idea that the key to reforming the electoral college--splitting states that control more than 10% of the electoral votes needed to elect a president. For today's installment of radical ideas, let's look at the actual day of the election.
With a country as geographically distributed as ours it becomes problematic to have some states vote before other states. By the time many workers in western states have gone to the polls after work, the election is already decided. Or if it isn't already over, it is trending in solidly in one direction, and people are not motivated to vote. The US percentage of age-eligible people who actually vote has not exceeded 60% since Nixon was first elected in 1968!
With those things in mind, here are a few changes that I propose that I think would make a world of difference:
- Make election day a federal holiday, so that everyone but medical and emergency personnel would be able to vote at any time during the day. Most of the objection to creating new federal holidays has to do with lost productivity, which equates to hundreds of millions of dollars. But who says we need a new holiday to do this? It turns out that we have a federal holiday very close to election day, which we could move to election day: Veterans Day. What that be the perfect way to celebrate our veterans? By exercising our unique and powerful right to vote?
- Make the polls open the same time--the same hours--in every state. Not the same local time, the same absolute time. I propose 9 am to 9 pm Eastern time (6 am to 6 pm in California). With the day off, and twelve hours to vote, there should be little or no excuse to avoid voting. By the way, even Hawaii (4 am to 4 pm) and Alaska (5 am to 5 pm) would have multiple daylight hours in which to vote.
- Because everyone was voting at the same time, there should be no delays in counting the votes. All precincts should be required to report by 10 pm eastern time. This would eliminate the need to track exit polls, as they would be meaningless.
- Limit early voting to hardship cases--people travelling abroad, servicemen, etc. Why would I want to limit absentee and early voting? Because I want everyone voting on the same information, rather that some voting early before "October surprises" are known. To accomplish that we should make absentee and early voting available, but only for those who truly would have a hardship meeting the new voting schedule.
So, to recap:
- Federal holiday.
- Same voting hours.
- All states reported and delivered simultaneously.
- Limited access to early/absentee ballots.
What would be the next effect? Imagine the moment at 10 pm! It would be the most incredible "And the winner is..." moment anywhere in the world for any competition. Picture the map suddenly lighting up blue here and red there, and within a few minutes the map is completely filled, and a winner proclaimed.
There is a unifying element to voting that only a national holiday serves. If we voted this way, I believe we would get greater turnout and a better sense of the country's preference. And it would be cool...
...and it has zero chance of happening, but it would be fun!
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