VOTE
Australia
Saturday
Austria
Sunday
Belgium
Sunday
Brazil
Sunday
Finland
Sunday
France
Sunday
Germany
Sunday
Greece
Sunday
Iceland
Saturday
Italy
Sunday and Monday
Japan
Sunday
Mexico
Sunday
New Zealand
Saturday
Portugal
Sunday or national holiday
Russia
Sunday
Spain
Sunday
Sweden
Sunday
Switzerland
Sunday
So my first proposal is that our national election day is changed from the first Tuesday in November to the first Sunday of November. That should guarantee a bigger turnout and thus our Congress and the President will be more representative of the whole country. The only reason why we vote on Tuesdays in November is because when this tradition began in 1845, it was the most convenient time for farmers to vote. It was timed for after the fall harvest and on a Tuesday because Monday was needed as a travel day to get to the polls. In other words, they set up our original elections to occur when it was least likely the majority of people would be working!
Well, times have changed, Tuesday’s a work day, so let’s move our election day to the weekend. It’s already been proposed in Congress; Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin has introduced the Weekend Voting Act to Congress in 1997, 2001, 2005, and again this year. All we need is some presidential leadership to get this moving. President Obama?
2.Every Citizen Is Automatically a Registered Voter.
I was once talking to a Canadian friend before an election there, and I wanted to know whether the party he favored had a chance of winning. I asked how their voter registration drives were going and if they were gonna turn out a big vote. He looked at me as if I were asking him to show me his handgun.
“Uh, voter registration drive?” he asked.
“Yeah. You gotta register new voters and young people if you want to have a chance of winning,” I explained. “Aren’t you canvassing, going door-to-door, registering students, holding house parties, going to nursing homes . . . ?”
“You do all that just to REGISTER voters?” he asked me. “That’s a waste of time and money, eh?”
“I guess. But you have to do it if you want to win elections.”
My Canadian friend explained to me that they too, at one point, had a time-consuming, money-wasting system that ended up leaving far too many voters off the election rolls.
Rather than blowing all that time and money only to end up falling short and leaving some voters unregistered, they created a federal database that eliminated the need to go though all that mess.
It was then that my Canadian friend hit me with some more humbling news. “Most Western democracies have systems like this. As a matter of fact, most democracies have universal voter registration. The requirement for being registered to vote is just being born. Your birth certificate is, in essence, your automatic Voter I.D. card. But you don’t take your birth certificate with you when you vote. You just show up and they look you up in the federal database of people who were born in Canada. So let’s say you’ve moved recently. Or you’ve been out of the country for a few years. Or you haven’t voted in a long time. Doesn’t matter. You just show up at the polls. They have your name.
“That way, I guess you could say our voter registration is 100 percent!”
I inquired how this was possible. “You mean you don’t have to stand in line at the city clerk or driver’s license place to register to vote? By the simple fact that you were born in your country, this automatically makes you a registered voter 18 years later?”
“Yup.”
Of course, my American mind goes right to the “what if” worst-case scenario.
“What about voter fraud? People going to different towns and voting more than once?”
“Is that your problem?” the Canadian asked me. “People voting
too much?
Isn’t your problem that you can’t get Americans to vote in the first place? It seems like it’s hard enough to get your countrymen to even vote
once
, let alone finding
Australia
Saturday
Austria
Sunday
Belgium
Sunday
Brazil
Sunday
Finland
Sunday
France
Sunday
Germany
Sunday
Greece
Sunday
Iceland
Saturday
Italy
Sunday and Monday
Japan
Sunday
Mexico
Sunday
New Zealand
Saturday
Portugal
Sunday or national holiday
Russia
Sunday
Spain
Sunday
Sweden
Sunday
Switzerland
Sunday
So my first proposal is that our national election day is changed from the first Tuesday in November to the first Sunday of November. That should guarantee a bigger turnout and thus our Congress and the President will be more representative of the whole country. The only reason why we vote on Tuesdays in November is because when this tradition began in 1845, it was the most convenient time for farmers to vote. It was timed for after the fall harvest and on a Tuesday because Monday was needed as a travel day to get to the polls. In other words, they set up our original elections to occur when it was least likely the majority of people would be working!
Well, times have changed, Tuesday’s a work day, so let’s move our election day to the weekend. It’s already been proposed in Congress; Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin has introduced the Weekend Voting Act to Congress in 1997, 2001, 2005, and again this year. All we need is some presidential leadership to get this moving. President Obama?
2.Every Citizen Is Automatically a Registered Voter.
I was once talking to a Canadian friend before an election there, and I wanted to know whether the party he favored had a chance of winning. I asked how their voter registration drives were going and if they were gonna turn out a big vote. He looked at me as if I were asking him to show me his handgun.
“Uh, voter registration drive?” he asked.
“Yeah. You gotta register new voters and young people if you want to have a chance of winning,” I explained. “Aren’t you canvassing, going door-to-door, registering students, holding house parties, going to nursing homes . . . ?”
“You do all that just to REGISTER voters?” he asked me. “That’s a waste of time and money, eh?”
“I guess. But you have to do it if you want to win elections.”
My Canadian friend explained to me that they too, at one point, had a time-consuming, money-wasting system that ended up leaving far too many voters off the election rolls.
Rather than blowing all that time and money only to end up falling short and leaving some voters unregistered, they created a federal database that eliminated the need to go though all that mess.
It was then that my Canadian friend hit me with some more humbling news. “Most Western democracies have systems like this. As a matter of fact, most democracies have universal voter registration. The requirement for being registered to vote is just being born. Your birth certificate is, in essence, your automatic Voter I.D. card. But you don’t take your birth certificate with you when you vote. You just show up and they look you up in the federal database of people who were born in Canada. So let’s say you’ve moved recently. Or you’ve been out of the country for a few years. Or you haven’t voted in a long time. Doesn’t matter. You just show up at the polls. They have your name.
“That way, I guess you could say our voter registration is 100 percent!”
I inquired how this was possible. “You mean you don’t have to stand in line at the city clerk or driver’s license place to register to vote? By the simple fact that you were born in your country, this automatically makes you a registered voter 18 years later?”
“Yup.”
Of course, my American mind goes right to the “what if” worst-case scenario.
“What about voter fraud? People going to different towns and voting more than once?”
“Is that your problem?” the Canadian asked me. “People voting
too much?
Isn’t your problem that you can’t get Americans to vote in the first place? It seems like it’s hard enough to get your countrymen to even vote
once
, let alone finding
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