Should election day (in the U.S.) be changed to saturdays?

[OzzyKP]

Agreed.

And lowering the voting age would help too.

[Winston]

Hold it Sunday morning when all the Liberals are sleeping heavily intoxicated, and all the Conservatives are in church.

Should get rid of the long lines.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by flash9286
should make election day a holiday

QFT. Some states already do this -- NY and PA are two I know of. But it should then be kept on Tuesday, just to discourage people not voting because they used a 3-day weekend to leave town.

[Kuciwalker]

Not just that. Tuesday isn't a religious day for any religion.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
With apologies to Zkrib:

Party A: "Party B are crooks!"
Party B: "Party A are morons!"
Non-Voter: "You're both right. I'm not voting for either one of you!"

What, you think partisanship will get less if you vote for a party?

I think what Odin was getting at was:

[continuing]:
Non-Voter: And I also hate Party C, and Party D and Party E. But Party F it reminds me of my grades in school.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Odin
No, What I am saying is that when you vote for the party instead of individuals it takes away the tactic of discedititing the individual canidate with personal mudslinging (think of the so-called "swift boat veterans bashing Kerry). It frees people to vote on the ISSUES instead of the personality of individual politicians.

Which is BS. They'll just based the personality of the leaders of the major parties. For example, in the last election in Germany, if you voted for the two major parties, you knew you were voting for Merkel or for Schroder.

[GePap]

Make it so that if you vote, you don't have to serve jury duty. That should get perticipation up.

[flash9286]

One way to increase voter turnout in local elections is not allow them to be "non-partisan" that way people don't actually have to read about their candidates views and they know who to vote for without actually doing any research.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by GePap
Make it so that if you vote, you don't have to serve jury duty. That should get perticipation up.

Don't know how effective an incentive that would be. My boss at one of my jobs was recently called up for (and dismissed before ever sitting in the box; the guy plead guilty instead of going for a trial-of-peers) jury duty for only the second time in the 20-odd years she's been eligible for it. It's such a one-off thing that I imagine few people would even notice such an incentive.

[OzzyKP]

Another thing to do is use instant run-off voting. I don't want a parlimentary type system, despite conventional wisdom I think being able to vote for the person gives us Americans more choices rather than less. There is far more diversity of opinion within our two parties than in European parties.

Having IRV will preserve our system but remove the whole casting a strategic vote problem and allow voters to better vote the conscious thus (hopefully) benefiting third parties.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Another thing to do is use instant run-off voting.

Let see if I understand how this works.

Say, there's 5 candidates: A, B, C, D & E. I put down my votes in order. I want D to win, so I put him 1. But if not D, then A, so A is 2. Then C, E and I really hate B. So I end up with.

A=2; B=5; C=3; D=1; E=4.

When the votes are in, my prize guy, D, comes in last. So, he's out, then the votes are retabulated, with my vote now going to my number two person: A. In the next round, E is the lowest vote getter, so she's out, and my by vote remains with A.

In the next round, A is eliminated, so my vote moves to C in the final B vs. C, runoff.

Right??