Election Day procedures - time to amend the Constitution?

[John_Mace]

@garygnu

Making it a holiday wouldn’t require an amendment, would it?
That being said, many retail stores are open on many national holidays, so that alone would not prevent many workers from being disenfranchised. I think Oregon has the right idea: all absentee/vote-by-mail. They get 75%+ registered voters voting and few problems, and no major ones.

I agree. Vote by mail is the way to go-- I’ve been doing it (in CA) for 2 decades (yeah, I’m old).

BTW, moving it to the weekend would be a terrible idea. Friday, Sat, and Sun are religious days, and some group somewhere would object to voting on their sabbath. As an example, for Orthodox Jews, voting on Saturday would probably not be allowed.

[Clothahump]

@Captain_Carrot

Really. You think the current system is hunky-dory. Everybody who wants to vote and is legally registered to vote is able to do so. Interesting.

And correct.

[suranyi]

@Omniscient

Recent thread on the same topic.

The National Holiday thing isn’t really that big of a deal. I’m generally in favor of more National Holidays but I’m not convinced that people are unable to vote because of work requirements. States have early voting and absentee ballots and if you work a service industry job you have plenty of options to get your vote cast before election day. The fact that it’s a work day does not disenfranchise voters, IMHO. However, I would support making it a National Holiday just for the sake of emphasizing how important a day it is. Anything that increases public awareness of voting and it’s importance is worthwhile. The fact that Presidential Election Years are Leap Years works nicely in that people will have the same number of work days in those years, but that’s just novelty.

However I really think that leaving election procedure and policy to the state and local levels is idiotic. States have far too much vested interest in it to be trusted to act objectively and election-to-election changes happen with too little oversight and far to casually. Some of the “technology” out there used to vote is an embarrassment. I think there should be one system out there that all states and all voters use universally. The ballots should be consistent and the distribution of the voting machines should be mandated by federal law in order to prevent local governments from under-serving neighborhoods from the other side of the aisle in a given election cycle.

Also, I think that it should be illegal for Churches to be polling places. They should be restricted to Post Offices, Town Halls, City Offices and Public Schools. There’s is something extraordinary about the fact this goes uncommented on in a country that professes the separation of church and state. The fact that the religion has become politicized and co-opted by the GOP makes it unacceptable that churches be used as polling places.

Interestingly, my polling place this year is a Buddhist church.

Ed