Congressman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) has introduced HR 6240. It would move federal election day from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, to the first full weekend in November. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
Congressman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) has introduced HR 6240. It would move federal election day from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, to the first full weekend in November. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
No, no, no, too much common sense!
Elections [Tuesdays], Education [School Year[s] starting in September, after a hard summer on the farm], Measurement[s] [The globe’s last major industrial non Metric hold out]: let’s all pretend that we are still a Jeffersonian Libertarian agrarian small town and farm society. Close your eyes! 1 – 2 – 3!
And while we’re at it, how about we call the people that “forget” to vote and record their “preferences”.
Weekend voting sounds good, but an election holiday would be even better.
I don’t really like either idea. I don’t know of any State that doesn’t allow “absentee voting” if you are required to work during polling hours or if you will be unable to vote in person on election day.
Anyone who wants to vote, will find a way.
Why waste time trying to push this bill? It’s already pretty easy for a person to go out and vote now. It just takes some effort. And if you really can’t fit it into your schedule, you will probably know that in advance from past experience and will know enough to go the absentee ballot route. The reason most people aren’t going out and voting now isn’t due to time constraints. It’s because their too damn lazy to go out and do their civic duty. That’s why it’s still a two party system, because people are too damn lazy to do their research on where all of the candidates running in their area stand. Vote on a weekend? Forget it as it will interfere with football. Everybody will be watching a game or too tired from the game to go down. Or else they’ll be complaining that it’s the first day off after a tough week at work and they’re to tired to go down. You’ll probably end up having less voters than you do now. Make it a Holiday? Forget it. People will use it to go away or hold barbecues like they do on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day. There comes a point when you have to ask, do you really want these people going into a voting booth anyway since they’re probably uninformed (by their own choosing) and are only going to pull a lever without doing any research whatsoever?
A few states use Saturday primaries and the turnout for them is no better than the states that use Tuesday primaries. Delaware and Louisiana have Saturday primaries, and maybe another state or two.
The bill provides for continuous voting from 10 am Eastern Standard Time on the first Saturday after the first Friday in November until 6 pm Eastern Standard Time until 10 pm Eastern Standard Time on Sunday. A State may provide a break from 10 pm local time Saturday until 6 am local time Sunday.
Rep. Israel seems to have forgotten that DST ends on the first Sunday in November, so that most years, the start time will will be based on EST, even though New York and other eastern states will be observing EDT. The overnight break is based on local time, so it will start on DST and end on standard time in most places making for a 9 hour break, and screwing up voters who arrive at the polling place at 6 am daylight time, and likely as not having some polling places open late because election officials switched their clocks the wrong direction.
His times appears to be based on New York sensibilities, letting eastern poll workers show up at mid-morning, while requiring west coast election officials to show up in the early dawn hours. People who want to use Saturday as their own time, may have to take time out from their painting or other home projects in order to vote.
Then you have poll workers having to secure the polling place at 10 pm (unless the State decides to keep the polling place open overnight for the convenience of those out after a Saturday night drinking. In either case, you have a security issue – either watching a closed polling place or watching out for people who are in some otherwise darkened building very late at night.
Then the polls open at the crack of dawn or before (this is November) on Sunday, but then close in the middle of the afternoon on the West Coast. This maximizes the conflict with the use of churches as polling places. While a common closing hour may make sense. The time chosen appears to be for the convenience of New York TV network officials who might not have to stay up as late.
More people may be away from the locality of residence on a weekend, because they can use it for recreation or other activities that they can’t do during their regular work week. Even those who remain in town may have other activities planned.
This would be a bit different than a Saturday primary, because it would require elections be held on both Saturday and Sunday of the weekend. Also, primaries tend to only bring out the regulars to begin with, so it may have a bigger impact on general election turnout.
Texas sometimes holds runoffs for special election on Saturday, and the uniform election in May is on a Saturday. They are easier to overlook.
Holding an elect tends to reduce news coverage. Newspapers cut back on Saturdays, and so do news operations of TV networks. People are more likely to have scheduled an activity that they want to do on the weekend, as opposed to the week when they have to go to work. People may not have the radio or TV on as they do on weekdays. They may sleep in until noon.
Nevada had their caucus on Saturday and lots of people got mad (Jews, for example, had to decide to go to their Church or go Caucus). You can’t please everyone.
In many countries that have tried national “holidays” for voting the result has been that voters do what they always do on holidays, they take holiday trips with their families and don’t vote.
Saturday voting, weekend voting and holiday voting are all bad ideas trying to fix something that ain’t broken.
In this case, tradition IS BETTER! We should keep the first Tuesday after the first Monday voting tradition because people know it, trust it, vote if they want to, and this part of the electoral system working fine.
Weekend election dates are pretty good, holidays not everyone gets off (believe me I used to work in retail). Voting absentee/by mail is easier than going to the polls for most people. However this is just one topic of many we have address when it comes to voting in the U.S. I’d like to see minimum national standards for all elections in the U.S., a constitutional right to vote, and of course universal (or no) ballot access laws for all federal elections.