Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren bog obam Here in the United
Speaker 1: States ranked twenty six in the world in voter participation,
Speaker 1: with only fifty percent of eligible voters casting ballots and
Speaker 1: the presidential election. That's better than the twelve elections participation
Speaker 1: rate of fifty three point six percent, but still embarrassingly
Speaker 1: low compared with say, Sweden's participation rate, even though is
Speaker 1: shaping up to be a year of higher the normal
Speaker 1: voter turnout in the United States, experts are predicting about
Speaker 1: sixtent turnout. Certainly nothing like so what's up with that?
Speaker 1: What motivates people to either vote or abstain from doing so.
Speaker 1: Some simply don't like the candidates running in a given year,
Speaker 1: prefer to spend their time otherwise or else somehow forget
Speaker 1: that there's an election. But according to a Pew Research
Speaker 1: Center survey of registered voters who did not cast ballots
Speaker 1: in the biggest single reason was scheduled conflicts with worker school,
Speaker 1: which kept thirty five percent of people who didn't vote
Speaker 1: from exercising their rights. Of course, there are increasing options
Speaker 1: in many places, such as mail in voting and early
Speaker 1: voting but election day schedule conflicts occur in large part
Speaker 1: because of a federal law from eighteen forty five, which
Speaker 1: designated a week day, specifically the first Tuesday after the
Speaker 1: first Monday of November, as election day. But an organization
Speaker 1: called why Tuesday has advocated a solution that's already being
Speaker 1: used successfully in Belgium, France, Germany, India and other countries.
Speaker 1: The group wants to change voting law and hold elections
Speaker 1: at a time that's better suited for modern day Americans. Ideally,
Speaker 1: they'd like to see election day held on a weekend,
Speaker 1: though making it a federal holiday during the week would
Speaker 1: be a fallback option. Why Tuesday co founder Norman j Ornstein,
Speaker 1: a political scientist an author whose resident scholar at the
Speaker 1: American Enterprise Institute, says that the current election day is
Speaker 1: an outmoded holdover from an age in which the country
Speaker 1: was very different from today. He explained the law was
Speaker 1: written to take into account the needs of a primarily
Speaker 1: agrarian society. There wasn't any uber or trains or cars.
Speaker 1: Farmers had to get their products to market in wagons,
Speaker 1: which usually required a day of travel, and they needed
Speaker 1: to be home for the sabbath, so they needed to
Speaker 1: have a day that fell between those, and people settled
Speaker 1: their accounts in those days on the first day of
Speaker 1: the month, so they couldn't vote then. Given those constraints,
Speaker 1: the first Tuesday that falls after the first Monday in
Speaker 1: November seemed like the best choice, but as Ornstein notes,
Speaker 1: the timing is not so convenient in a modern, industrialized,
Speaker 1: technologically advanced society where many people work during the day
Speaker 1: from Monday through Friday, say nine am to five pm
Speaker 1: or thereabouts. And we of a system in which we
Speaker 1: have to vote near where we live, which isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: near where we work, Ornstein said. And that means that
Speaker 1: if you're going to vote on election day, you have
Speaker 1: to go to the polls first thing in the morning
Speaker 1: before you go to work, or else rush over there
Speaker 1: late at night and hope that you can get there
Speaker 1: in time. Either way, if you run into a two
Speaker 1: hour line, you might not be able to vote. Though
Speaker 1: side note, if you do go late on election day,
Speaker 1: stay in line, the polls cannot close without allowing you
Speaker 1: to exercise your right. If it were up to Ornstein,
Speaker 1: he would switch election day to a weekend, more specifically,
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour period from noon on Saturday to
Speaker 1: noon on Sunday. He said that way we wouldn't run
Speaker 1: into a problem for people who keep the Sabbath. Additionally,
Speaker 1: Ornstein would hold three days of early voting on Wednesday
Speaker 1: through Friday of the week before the Saturday Sunday election.
Speaker 1: That would accommodate people who work on weekends, as well
Speaker 1: as more of those who have out of town travel scheduled.
Speaker 1: Forty eight states have adopted a version of this concept,
Speaker 1: with money having two or three weeks of early voting.
Speaker 1: But that's not all. To make voting even easier, Ornstein
Speaker 1: would use communications advances to set up remote voting stations
Speaker 1: where any citizen could vote during the designated times, no
Speaker 1: matter where they live in a given city or state.
Speaker 1: As an alternative to weekend voting, Ornstein would favor the
Speaker 1: solution of making election Day a federal holiday, but he
Speaker 1: thinks that that wouldn't work quite so well. He said,
Speaker 1: setting up a new holiday is always an expensive proposition
Speaker 1: for the economy, and if you piggyback it on Veterans Day,
Speaker 1: veterans are going to feel understandably short changed. So what's
Speaker 1: preventing us from change and some argue that it's a
Speaker 1: subtle way of suppressing votes from people more likely to
Speaker 1: have difficulty voting, people who are younger or older, or
Speaker 1: less financially advantaged. But Ornstein suggests that we've stayed with
Speaker 1: Tuesday more out of inertia than resistance. He said, we
Speaker 1: have a political system that doesn't do anything easily in
Speaker 1: these day as it has become so dysfunctional that it
Speaker 1: doesn't even do critically important things that well. For the
Speaker 1: past several sessions of Congress, Steve Israel, a Democratic representative
Speaker 1: from New York, has introduced legislation to move election day
Speaker 1: to a weekend. His proposals have never made it out
Speaker 1: of committee. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For born this months of
Speaker 1: other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain
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