this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Everyone was also at home/working from home/on flex schedules due to covid in 2020. People had time to vote, they had time to research things and take part in political discourse. Everyone always forgets that little historical tidbit.
2024 may hit record low voter turnout as the nazi's ratchet up anti voter laws, removing polling places, and companies keep putting the economic screws on their workers with stagnant pay and forced return-to-office so citizens don't have time to think about the political process.
Can Biden just say fuck it and declare a national holiday? Would that help at all? What about making voting mandatory like we have in Australia? You get a small fine if you don't vote which is usually enough incentive.
It wouldn't really help I think, I think what needs to be done is a change in the verbage and communication, nov 5th should be communicated as the deadline, and early voting should be renamed to just be the voting period.
In my state early voting starts on Oct 17th, meaning you have more than two week for in person voting.
Absentee ballots (mail in) can be cast as soon as you get it, which is typically almost 2 months in advance.
Besides, the people who would get 'national vote day' off as a holiday are the people who probably already have the means to get to a ballot box.
Having a national work holiday would do wonders for voter turnout. Most people in states who are required to vote in person can't get the time off to visit a poll booth while they're open.
Another shout out to all the states that have at-home voting through the mail. You get a pamphlet with their stances and websites and you have a long time to get it in. It's an amazing thing.
This is an example for the primaries in August: https://voter.votewa.gov/genericvoterguide.aspx?e=888&c=99#/
I live in Oregon and can vouch for this system. Voting is super easy. You get mailed your ballot, you can fill it out and mail it back at your leisure, or turn it into your local county drop box if it's too close to election day. The system is secure, all ballots are verified locally and create their own paper trail. No voter fraud, and anyone who claims there is is just a piece of shit.
Seconding your vouching. It really is painless.
That’s why Colorado is on the 2016 chart with such good turnout. It’s incredibly easy to vote here. You’re automatically registered. You automatically receive a blue book weeks ahead. You automatically get a mail in ballot. And there’s thousands of drop-off locations. Mine is literally two streets over. Takes like 4 minutes to walk there, I don’t even bother to mail it in because it’s almost just as much work to do that as drop it off.
In most of the countries of the World elections are on Sunday and Saturday for this exact reason, US could change to weekend voting days as well:
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/46ukem/so_camerons_eu_referendum_is_on_a_thursday_which/
Another confirmation that Russia is European country.
Also, US, please fix yet another thing you are worse at than Russia.
Who debated that. Historically, culturally Russia is European. Most of the population of Russia lives on the western side of the Urals.
But using it as a good example of elections, well... In the US you can choose from 2 candidates. In russia you can select from 1...
Yeah, I'd love voting on a Saturday tbh. There's still a lot of people working service schedules who wouldn't be able to, but that could also be fixed by universal vote by mail, or make it two separate days even.... really the answer is just to make it a damn mandatory holiday and call it.
The problem I have with mandatory voting is, besides the fact that it would require a national holiday and changes to timing that would already drive up voter participation... given current political behavior in the US it's going to drive a lot of apathy voting to just avoid the consequences that could be more harmful than not.
I absolutely think every citizen should be voting, but it's also not really right to just force them to do it- Give them the resources (time off) and the reason to actually do it, and we'll have turnout of 70%+.