Weekend voting an idea whose time has come? Obama thinks so.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) wandered around Capitol Hill recently, armed with a video camera and a question: Why do we vote on Tuesdays?
“Um...”
That was the response from most people -– even lawmakers.
“Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know the answer,” Israel reassured his perplexed interviewees. “Hardly anybody does, including most members of Congress.”
Israel made the video to push the Weekend Voting Act, legislation he introduced last month that would switch the days on which federal elections are held from Tuesdays to Saturdays and Sundays, when, presumably, more people would be able to cast ballots.
The clip is posted on the website of Why Tuesday? which is dedicated to increasing voter turnout through election reform.
Jacob Soboroff, the site’s director (and the son of former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Steve Soboroff), has crisscrossed the....
...country on behalf of WhyTuesday? posting video interviews with many big-name politicians, including Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.
Obama said he would support a shift to weekend voting. McCain didn't take a stance on that point, but he promised Soboroff that he would do anything to increase voter participation.
When asked if he thought an alternative idea -- declaring a national voters' holiday -- would work, McCain was skeptical.
“I’m not sure that people wouldn’t just go fishing,” he said.
Perhaps luckily for them, neither Obama nor McCain was asked the question that Israel posed to tourists and lawmakers in his video: Why Tuesday?
It turns out Congress chose Tuesday for a voting day in 1845 to make the process easier for citizens of an agrarian society. Back then, farmers needed to vote on a day that wouldn’t interfere with the three-day Sabbath or Wednesday, which was market day.
Today, according to Soboroff, one in four people who don’t vote say it’s because weekdays are inconvenient.
-- Kate Linthicum
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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No public bus routes available here in rural Oregon on Sat. or. Sun.--but then we vote by mail, so whatever.
Posted by: TheNumantine | July 18, 2008 at 02:19 PM
Weekend voting? The democrats would never win another election ever again. On weekend young people are too drunk for partying to care about voting for one second. They have places to go and things to do. Buses don't run as often and people are busy with their lives even more. It's a bad idea, but I guess that's why Obama loves it.
Posted by: coolrepublica | July 18, 2008 at 03:39 PM
It is not the day that matters it is the people who just don't want to register and vote. We could make Tuesday a National Voting Holiday. Everybody off and everybody must vote all stores closed, and only voting allowed.
VJ Machiavelli
http://www.vjmachiavelli.blogspot.com
Posted by: VJ Machiavelli | July 18, 2008 at 10:17 PM
following the 'great' example, set by all 'great' dictatorships? to use coercion to vote for, or against someone, would represent the violation of the constitution, and would by definition, defeat the cause: it would mean to mock and rape the people, and in addition, waste their time. on the contrary, the constitutional thing to do, is to add to the ballot, the choice that says: 'none of those listed.' and to support, to register and count, all and any write-in votes.
Posted by: dave | July 19, 2008 at 05:18 AM
'distracted even by a single blade of grass, a lamb is easily defeated, and can be caught off guard while dreaming, of lush green pastures.'
ba-rok-hu-sas-ein-ab-oma the 'mothman', the 'spittlebug': set up to complete a shift of paradigm. the mission: to destroy and erase from within, the bridge that still affords america, as a whole nation, to return to freedom - by way of the CONSTITUTION. the strategy and goal: to completely alienate the people from the intentions and provisions, of the nation's founding fathers, and turn the country into yet another, 'fatherless' corporate fascist state; incorporated into the supreme rule and law of the 'mother' of all deception, masked as liberation, and victory - the global nwo; to rule by tyranny, and brute force of power. (as discussed by malcolm on this blog before, mccain and obama, not so coincidentally, share a suicidal literary hero, who also shares this perverse passion, to blow up bridges, in a country he does not care for, and to no good end). RON PAUL is the only candidate for president qualified and willing to correct the desastrous course, and to protect the inalienable rights, the invaluable birthright of all free people, that cannot be stolen without their informed consent; and that cannot be sold, but in exchange for perpetual slavery and shame.
'democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner tonight. freedom is a well-armed lamb.'
- benjamin franklin
Posted by: dave | July 19, 2008 at 07:25 AM
And when the lamb is too well-armed he blows freedom to smithereens, destroys his country's reputation, and obliterates the ecosystem and murders the economy.
Franklin was syphillitic and always went a little too far with metaphors but that's besides the point:
Point is Ron Paul is out of the race and the closest thing you got is the Muslim terrorist who's going to eat your children, cancel all church services and institute mandatory gay orgies in their place.
Sure Barack is full of rhetoric, but how else do you get to people?--especially when we have such low expectations of our own country's citizens?
In complete candidness, no candidate/politican is fit to run a country, should ever be elected--the personality type is of ego, business, and vanity, even if he didn't start out that way. We do the best we can and the younger we go, the smaller the chance of the corruption, if only because of time.
Barack is for freedom, I am sure. Or were you talking about Bush?
Posted by: Ken | July 30, 2008 at 07:23 PM