Election day should be a National holiday to ensure that everyone can vote. Especially as other posters have said, so many places make it so difficult to vote. I can only imagine what Election Day will look like this year with the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s crazy that elections in the US are always held on a weekday. The vast majority of other countries hold elections on Sunday. Or, as you say, it should be a holiday.
We hold ours on a Saturday, and have pre-poll voting (and easy access to postal voting) for people who can't make it on the day. As many polling places are in schools, the schools and local community groups use it as an excuse to hold a sausage sizzle, and a bake sale to raise funds - completely unrelated to the actual election. Hence the whole "democracy sausage" thing that was going round a few years back.
We also have compulsory enrolment, and compulsory voting*, so trying to make it difficult for people to vote could actually open you up to serious legal problems**. And we have preferential voting.
* A bit of a misnomer. You don't have to vote, but you do either have to attend a polling place and have your name crossed off the electoral roll, or submit a ballot paper by post. What you do with that ballot paper is private, however, so you can spoil it if you feel you don't want to actually contribute to the process, or object to all candidates equally.
** There are mechanisms for people to be excluded from the electoral process. The states have the power to exclude people from state elections, which in turn excludes them from federal elections. This has been abused by some state governments to disenfranchise entire communities, usually rural indigenous communities for some reason.
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We also have compulsory enrolment, and compulsory voting*, so trying to make it difficult for people to vote could actually open you up to serious legal problems**. And we have preferential voting.
* A bit of a misnomer. You don't have to vote, but you do either have to attend a polling place and have your name crossed off the electoral roll, or submit a ballot paper by post. What you do with that ballot paper is private, however, so you can spoil it if you feel you don't want to actually contribute to the process, or object to all candidates equally.
** There are mechanisms for people to be excluded from the electoral process. The states have the power to exclude people from state elections, which in turn excludes them from federal elections. This has been abused by some state governments to disenfranchise entire communities, usually rural indigenous communities for some reason.