Tuesday, November 04, 2008

On Election Day



Vote if you haven't already. Then a very, very stupid question:

Why on earth are the elections not held over a Saturday and a Sunday?

More people could vote with fewer sacrifices (in terms of lost pay, having to work overtime to make up lost work or having to hire childcare) and that usually means that more people would vote in general. Employers should love this, because most of them don't need workers over the weekends and thus wouldn't lose money over the elections. If the polls were open two days the question of either one of them being someone's religious holy day would be less important.

Alternatively, voting could be organized in some high tech form. That these simple remedies are not strongly supported, that registering to vote is made as burdensome as possible in many states, all this suggests that the real intention is not to have too many people vote.
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Added later: Amanda has done a proper post on this topic.