New day needed for election

Friday, August 1, 2008 10:16 PM CDT

It’s been a century or more since voters had to hop down from the saddle and hitch ol’ Silver to the post while they cast their ballot. So why is our election process frozen in that era?

Rep. Steve Israel, a Democratic congressman from New York, has taken the reins in the ongoing push to move federal elections to the weekend. His colleagues should saddle up and take the idea for a trot.

The Tuesday tradition is a remnant of the 19th century, when voting was centralized at the county seat. Outlying farmers needed time to get into town and back without interfering with sabbath days.

Modern horsepower can cross those distances in minutes. Not that voters need to, with polling places spread all across the county.

Israel’s House bill would move federal votes to Saturday and Sunday. Doing both days would accommodate those with religious objections to voting on one or the other.

The idea, of course, is to make it easier for more Americans to vote. As democracies go, ours is light on participation.

According to the director of Electionline, a group that advocates for election reform, nothing indicates a shift in days would change that. He might want to re-examine survey figures from the Census Bureau.

They show that one in five non-voters in the 2004 presidential election had trouble getting away from work or school or were otherwise busy.

That’s become much more of a hurdle in recent years. In 1980, only 8 percent skipped the booth because of those conflicts.

Employers are required to allow people time to go and vote during the work day. That sounds good in theory, but a bulging inbox can turn an hour away into a monstrous inconvenience.

Israel’s counterpart in the Senate is Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl. The senator has been trying to get various versions of the Weekend Voting Act passed since 1997 but has failed to pique enough interest among his colleagues. Kohl said he’d also consider leaving election day where it is but making it a holiday.

It’s not surprising that legislators would give only lukewarm support to changing the election system. They got into office under that system, after all.

Local elections typically piggyback on bigger ones to cut costs, and local officials might resist a change to the weekend. But any jolt out of the norm would be good for local races, which are decided by small fractions of the populace.

The election calendar doesn’t have to be aimed at apathetic voters. They wouldn’t notice a new date no matter how colorfully it’s written. It just has to be aimed at the 21st century.

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