To me its just another piece of evidence that "they" (the politcal powers) don't want people to vote. I work very far from my voting station and my workplace could care less (granted that is their fault too), but in many countries you don't have to work on Election Day and they have higher voter turnout. The less people that vote, the better it is for them.
I agree nicodemus. BTW, I am not as productive today seeing as I'm refreshing a few websites every minutes to find "0% precincts reporting". Yeah, this polisci stuff intrigues me.
I'm not suggesting the weekend...I'm suggesting you take a day off just for that purpose, which is done in many places all across the globe. Like I said, I work probably a half hour's drive from my voting place and my workplace only has a few employees, so going to vote would keep me out a good chunk of the day, which they aren't too keen on. If people didn't have to work today, voter turnout would be much higher.
Perhaps that's true, but you don't know until you try it. Politicians "complain" about low voter turnout, but they are doing nothing to improve it.
Part of the reason why the US wouldn't switch to a weekend voting day (besides the Constitution, of course) is religion. Orthodox Jews cannot vote on Saturdays, and there have to be some fundamentalist Christians who could not vote on a Sunday.
Americans are apathetic because they know that their opinions do not matter. Case in point. . .I know no one who wants the Olympics in NYC yet there is good chance that it will happen. People will care if their opinions are heard.
NPR this morning said it was an economic decision to put Election Day on Tuesdays. Something about financial reports coming out on Mondays and not having that affect voter decisions. I only caught a bit of the report so I don't know why not another weekday. Nonetheless, weekends weren't really ever considered.
The Tuesday that falls between Nov. 2 and 8 was chosen before the Civil War. They chose a weekday because rural people often had to travel several hours into town to vote, and they didn't want to force people to travel on Sundays. November was chosen because it was after most of the work was done on farms but before the weather usually gets really bad, so people could take the day to go vote. And they made sure it was never Nov. 1 because that's All Saints' Day.
Dude, just get off your lazy ass and go vote. The company I'm working on a project for (one of the Big 3 automakers) gives us the day off. Well I, along with only a small handful of others, still showed up for work today. I'd bet less than half of the others will vote today, it's just a union-inspired holiday (even though we in the offices are non-union, thankfully) to get union workers to vote Democratic. People are always looking for another reason to get out of work, like all of a sudden they are civic-minded. These same people couldn't tell me who their US senator is, let alone their Rep.
Ian's got a point. The UAW schedules a day off for elections. I let you determine why that is. I have my opinion. But polling places stay open late. Combine that with absentee ballots, and you really have no excuse to not vote. If you don't vote and you feel underrepresented, well then that's your own damn fault.
Until some point in the 1950s or 60s Maine voted several weeks ahead of other states. I believe this had somethng to do with the potato harvest. Maine was often a leading indicator which led to the old saying "As Maine goes, so goes the Nation." in 1936 Maine went for Landon over FDR, but only one other state followed. This led to the quip "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont."
What would be wrong with having Election Day be a national holiday? Kind of like the Catholic "Holy Days of Obligation"...we'd have a "Democracy Day of Obligation." Also, force the kids to go to school, so mom and dad can vote and then have a day to themselves for the rest of the day. And the older kids should be the ones manning the voting booths, learning about democracy in action, etc. Hands on Social Studies class for that day every year. Oh, and with the "Obligation Day" and all, we could also add a "non-voting tax" for all those lazy slobs who spend their day off just watching Springer.
Australia has something similar. If you don't vote you have to pay a $30 fine. They get over 90% every time.
That is an interesting idea, but they better have "none of the above" as an option if they are fining people for not voting.
True. It's commonly called "Compulsory Voting" or something, and it's actually moderately used in many places around the globe in various democracies. We had a thread on this last year, IIR, and I did a quick search on the internet. I had originally just thrown the idea out there, and then was surprised to see that many places actually do it.
Iraq does it as well and they get 100% of eligible voters out there voting. It's great. Perhaps we should try compuslory voting as well.
What's that internet theorem about someone bringing up "Hitler" and thus ending serious discussion on the thread? Dante seems to be introducing a new variant here with this total non sequitur comparison to Iraq. Oh well, let's play along... Since Iraq "uses" democracy as well, perhaps we should also think about dropping that clearly invalidated system.
I'm assuming an Election Day Holiday will not apply to news anchors and election staff. Edit: what I meant to say was, I'm not at all against making election day a holiday. Not sure how feasible the penalty idea is, attractive as it may be.
Use this trick, people will all come out vote - enter your ballot at the same time as a multi-billion dollar lottery ticket that will be drawn after the conclusion of the election night! Guarantee close to 99% votes.
Apples and oranges. Context. That election had one candidate. The people wanted to show the USA that they, the nation, had to stand together. That and it is not really "compuslory voting", but "compuslory voting for Saddam" which is quite different. It is not the idea of compuslory voting that made democracy a joke, but Saddam that made "his democracy" the joke.