Why not make it a federal holiday? Aside from all essential workers, no business can open on election day until after 3pm. You are guaranteed that 95%+ of the voting population can make it to the polls then, which will eliminate the necessity for early voting and/or mail in voting aside from those essential workers and anybody stuck overseas. I think it's a bit conceited to think that people are using these other mechanisms because they are lazy or part of some fraudulent scheme. You point to 1996 as some grand achievement, meanwhile, only 51.7%* of the VEP (voting eligible population) turned out and only 51.7% of eligible voters made it. Let's make it easy for everybody to vote on one day and then we can eliminate most of the other mechanisms that have been used to increase voter turnout.
I think the issue I have with the argument is that it conflates the right and left objections to electoral foul play. The right tends to point to assertions of fraud and the left points to voter suppression. Moving to Election Day-only voting could allay the concerns on the right — maybe — but will smack of further suppression on the left. Making voting less convenient is not a way to increase voter participation or inspire voter confidence. It would do the opposite.
I support single-day in-person voting for everyone without some kind of unavoidable hardship (military service, disability, etc.), not because of fears about (non-existent) fraud, but because I think we need to recover the practice of civic rituals performed together in person. In an age of dissolution and difference, we need regular occurrences to participate in civic affairs with our neighbors to remind ourselves that we maintain our republic only as long as we hang together. It would be great if Voting Day was treated as a nationwide holiday, and not a patchwork of people working and not working. Switching to a ranked choice system (instant runoff) would also boost the value of Voting Day as a singular event since there would be no need for low-turnout runoffs on a random Tuesday after the big election.
Drew, do you still watch nothing but Leave It To Beaver and Gunsmoke for entertainment? Does your family vacation only center on what Howard Johnson can do for you? Go to church every Sunday and live in an all white neighborhood where your neighbor’s grandparents graduated from the local high school?
Sorry to be so tedious about the point but we have friends and family broadly scattered now, not to mention work and other requirements, and everyone making the polls between 6am & 6pm on the 2nd Tuesday of whatever is impractical - AND unnecessary. The safeguards ARE there; that has been demonstrated time and time again. And elections are safer and fairer than 50 or 100 or 125 years ago. So quit being an idiot; don’t feed into the bullshit rhetoric that (mostly) the GOP wants to spread because they fear a government OF the people that was electing candidates FOR the people might wake up and realize a bit more consideration of ALL the people would yield better results.
I simply disagree with this article. First, yes, it's is true that regardless of how much fraud or abuse can be proven, the mere appearance of foul play constitutes a problem that should be remedied. The remedy is for politicians to stop making false claims. Frankly, when people like Trump say they have a list of 40,000+ people in Georgia who illegally voted, they should be put in handcuffs until they turn over that list to law enforcement.
Second, we have primary elections in the Spring or Summer and a General Election in November. Taking a few days or a week is not a disaster. Same for the General Election in November when the winners take office in January.
There is an old joke about the Irish Catholics (oft told by my German-American Catholic grandmother) that the Irish confuse being religious with being uncomfortable.
In a similar way, don't confuse making voting inconvenient to voters as being patriotic.
The problem isn't the mechanism, it's the Democrat Party and their fraudulent and terrorist outriders. So far we have seen the fraud in a handful of counties in swing states. Mail ballots are the current technology but before that there was the Boss Tweed way. He was the origin of the statement usually attributed to Stalin about the vote counters. As for the terrorism, that is the next phase. It is not hard to identify localities that are heavily partisan. Shooting up or bombing the voting lines in those places can differently tilt the turnout. And we all know which ideology is fond of violence.
Sounds good but there is a slight problem with it. D's tend to vote by mail or drop off ballet ahead of time. R's don't. Some time ago (I forget the election) there was a snowstorm either on election day or the day before. The roads, in this case the Interstate was blocked and shut down. The people who voted ahead of time had their votes counted. The ones who could not get to the poles that day did not. If you live in a place where you can walk to a polling station or it's a short drive it isn't a problem. If the voting station is X miles away (think the midwest and west) it could be. Lyft did a survey and found that voting dropped by 20% when distances increased by even one mile. True/False? Don't know but I think it's something to be looked at before hand rather than afterwards. Everything looks good on paper.
Shame on Commonplace and AC. Y'all support Don's insurrection and continuing election lies, yet have the temerity to publish this fake story? MAGA/"new" right voters don't trust elections because your aging, incoherent, three time nominee continues to lie to you, not because there is actual evidence of significant fraud.
A great side effect of Covid was to enable sensible practices like remote work and dag mamit …. mail in voting. No one needs to go back to Neanderthal voting methods unless you are in fact a Neanderthal 😂 And also Election Day should just not be on a work day or ideally be another holiday 😎
Why not make it a federal holiday? Aside from all essential workers, no business can open on election day until after 3pm. You are guaranteed that 95%+ of the voting population can make it to the polls then, which will eliminate the necessity for early voting and/or mail in voting aside from those essential workers and anybody stuck overseas. I think it's a bit conceited to think that people are using these other mechanisms because they are lazy or part of some fraudulent scheme. You point to 1996 as some grand achievement, meanwhile, only 51.7%* of the VEP (voting eligible population) turned out and only 51.7% of eligible voters made it. Let's make it easy for everybody to vote on one day and then we can eliminate most of the other mechanisms that have been used to increase voter turnout.
*https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections
Exactly 👍
This.
I think the issue I have with the argument is that it conflates the right and left objections to electoral foul play. The right tends to point to assertions of fraud and the left points to voter suppression. Moving to Election Day-only voting could allay the concerns on the right — maybe — but will smack of further suppression on the left. Making voting less convenient is not a way to increase voter participation or inspire voter confidence. It would do the opposite.
Unless we make it a Federal holiday.
I support single-day in-person voting for everyone without some kind of unavoidable hardship (military service, disability, etc.), not because of fears about (non-existent) fraud, but because I think we need to recover the practice of civic rituals performed together in person. In an age of dissolution and difference, we need regular occurrences to participate in civic affairs with our neighbors to remind ourselves that we maintain our republic only as long as we hang together. It would be great if Voting Day was treated as a nationwide holiday, and not a patchwork of people working and not working. Switching to a ranked choice system (instant runoff) would also boost the value of Voting Day as a singular event since there would be no need for low-turnout runoffs on a random Tuesday after the big election.
Drew, do you still watch nothing but Leave It To Beaver and Gunsmoke for entertainment? Does your family vacation only center on what Howard Johnson can do for you? Go to church every Sunday and live in an all white neighborhood where your neighbor’s grandparents graduated from the local high school?
Sorry to be so tedious about the point but we have friends and family broadly scattered now, not to mention work and other requirements, and everyone making the polls between 6am & 6pm on the 2nd Tuesday of whatever is impractical - AND unnecessary. The safeguards ARE there; that has been demonstrated time and time again. And elections are safer and fairer than 50 or 100 or 125 years ago. So quit being an idiot; don’t feed into the bullshit rhetoric that (mostly) the GOP wants to spread because they fear a government OF the people that was electing candidates FOR the people might wake up and realize a bit more consideration of ALL the people would yield better results.
Sorry for being long-winders
I simply disagree with this article. First, yes, it's is true that regardless of how much fraud or abuse can be proven, the mere appearance of foul play constitutes a problem that should be remedied. The remedy is for politicians to stop making false claims. Frankly, when people like Trump say they have a list of 40,000+ people in Georgia who illegally voted, they should be put in handcuffs until they turn over that list to law enforcement.
Second, we have primary elections in the Spring or Summer and a General Election in November. Taking a few days or a week is not a disaster. Same for the General Election in November when the winners take office in January.
There is an old joke about the Irish Catholics (oft told by my German-American Catholic grandmother) that the Irish confuse being religious with being uncomfortable.
In a similar way, don't confuse making voting inconvenient to voters as being patriotic.
The problem isn't the mechanism, it's the Democrat Party and their fraudulent and terrorist outriders. So far we have seen the fraud in a handful of counties in swing states. Mail ballots are the current technology but before that there was the Boss Tweed way. He was the origin of the statement usually attributed to Stalin about the vote counters. As for the terrorism, that is the next phase. It is not hard to identify localities that are heavily partisan. Shooting up or bombing the voting lines in those places can differently tilt the turnout. And we all know which ideology is fond of violence.
Sounds good but there is a slight problem with it. D's tend to vote by mail or drop off ballet ahead of time. R's don't. Some time ago (I forget the election) there was a snowstorm either on election day or the day before. The roads, in this case the Interstate was blocked and shut down. The people who voted ahead of time had their votes counted. The ones who could not get to the poles that day did not. If you live in a place where you can walk to a polling station or it's a short drive it isn't a problem. If the voting station is X miles away (think the midwest and west) it could be. Lyft did a survey and found that voting dropped by 20% when distances increased by even one mile. True/False? Don't know but I think it's something to be looked at before hand rather than afterwards. Everything looks good on paper.
Shame on Commonplace and AC. Y'all support Don's insurrection and continuing election lies, yet have the temerity to publish this fake story? MAGA/"new" right voters don't trust elections because your aging, incoherent, three time nominee continues to lie to you, not because there is actual evidence of significant fraud.
Paging Mike Pence...
A great side effect of Covid was to enable sensible practices like remote work and dag mamit …. mail in voting. No one needs to go back to Neanderthal voting methods unless you are in fact a Neanderthal 😂 And also Election Day should just not be on a work day or ideally be another holiday 😎