This Tuesday, November 6, millions of Americans will embark on the same ritual they have followed for years: Every first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, they vote.
But why is Election Day on this specific Tuesday in November?
As the Federal Election Commission previously explained, this has to do with very specific considerations that Congress had in mind back in 1845 when it set a standardized voting day:
Essentially, Congress set up a day that would most accommodate a bunch of (white, male) farmers’ working, traveling, and religious practices.
But as anyone with a cursory knowledge of history can guess, a lot has happened since this hypothetical white male farmer was the primary American voter — hence why, for many Americans, the timing of Election Day can feel very arbitrary and inconvenient.
Consider just a few of the major events that have happened since 1845: the fruition of the Industrial Revolution (arguably the biggest event in human history), women gaining the right to vote, the end of slavery, black people obtaining the right to vote, and, most recently, the invention of the internet. In that time, the labor force went from around 60 percent farmers to below 2 percent.
These events have, obviously, impacted how people vote and, critically, when they can vote. In general, people no longer find a Tuesday in early November a convenient time to vote thanks to a lull in their farming schedules. Instead, voting on this day forces people to navigate around the standard Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm schedule that dictates not just when many people work but also when many people go to school or take their kids to daycare. Election Day has gone from convenient to very inconvenient.
But state and federal governments have been slow to catch up with the times. Yes, 37 states now allow no-excuse early voting, but 13 either require an excuse (such as a work trip) or don’t allow it at all. And early voting days can be cumbersome — some places don’t allow early voting on many or any weekends, when it would be most convenient for many people with kids and busy work schedules to vote. And states may also limit early voting to weekdays during 9-to-5 office hours when people are working.
On some level, the whole setup seems ridiculous: In the 171 years since Congress set the standardized Election Day, has really nothing changed that would necessitate a new official day for voting? Why should a bunch of dead farmers who lived in a country that still allowed slavery and banned women from voting continue to guide the day that most US voters exercise their most basic right?
It’s just one of the many ways America’s voting system is outdated. Surely there has to be a better day for voting — particularly a day that’s on the weekend, when people are much more likely to have free time.
Beyond changing Election Day, there are many steps that all levels of government can take to make voting easier.
Here are a few possibilities, based on what some states and other places are already doing:
All of these help address a serious problem: The US has relatively low voter turnout for a wealthy nation — meaning much of the population doesn’t have its voice heard. About 55.7 percent of the US voting-age population turned out to vote in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Other countries reported significantly higher shares of their voting-age population turning out to vote in recent elections: 87.2 percent in Belgium, 69.1 percent in Germany, and 63.3 percent in the UK.
Some of the difference is explained by differences in policies. Unlike most wealthy countries, the US doesn’t automatically register voters (as Germany and Sweden do), and it doesn’t seek them out aggressively to push them to register (as the UK does). And the US definitely doesn’t go as far as Belgium or Australia, which make voting compulsory — an idea with some merit, as Dylan Matthews explained for Vox.
All of that, of course, falls on top of more typical voting issues, such as a lack of access to transportation to get to a polling place on Election Day or being unable to take time away from work or family life to vote.
The policy changes listed above could alleviate these issues. Some of them, particularly the expansion of voting days, cost more money. It’s going to be up to lawmakers and their constituents in different jurisdictions to decide what the right balance of costs and access to voting is.
But whatever approach one takes, it’s clear that there is a lot that could be done to make voting easier. And we can start by reconsidering when Election Day happens.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
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