The tradition of voting on the first Tuesdays of Novembers was establish in 1845 when it made sense to many Americans living on farms to rest on the Sabbath, travel on Monday, vote on Tuesday, and to travel back home on Wednesday. Yet as Eric Black puts it, it "Made some sense in 1845. Makes little sense now.", the vast majority of Americans are no longer farmers, we no longer have to travel far to vote, and this tradition no longer helps Americans vote but rather restricts many of them. A study has shown that when non-voters are asked why they haven't voted yet, the two common answers have been "schedule conflicts" or "too busy", poor excuses, however we must greatly consider them and find a solution. Perhaps a better alternative could be making the first Tuesdays of Novembers a national holiday, or perhaps changing the the day to a Saturday or extending the voting period for the entire weekend. Some individuals may be against these alternatives, arguing we must not change our traditions, or bother the economy, arguing that we're doing 'just fine', however I think that it is more important to provide everyone at least the opportunity to vote, and thus I'm arguing that we should change our elections days.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Blog Stage Five: Let's change our election days!
The United State's government is run by the people and for the people yet the great irony is that only 50% of the American people are taking up the opportunity to vote. Many may argue that the voter turnout is low because many people (approximately 50% of the american people) do not care to place a vote. This however is not an appropriate answer. The key issues is that America is the only democracy to hold its elections on Tuesdays while other democracies vote on the weekends, or have a day off work to vote, or have more than one day to vote, ultimately restricting many Americans from even having the chance to vote. Though this argument seems to be well acknowledged by the government, the government has not done much due to two reasons: It's almost a tradition to vote on Tuesdays since 1845, and changing the voting day or making them a holiday, would create a great change in our economy.
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On Monday, June 20, 2016, one of my classmate name Rebecca Choi came out with an argument about changing theElection Day. I strongly agree with Rebecca's opinion. There will be an upcoming big event on November 08, which is Presidential Election. Election Day is one of the most important days for people to showing their responsibility as a citizen. However, according to the article from QUARTZ, 58 countries had a better voter turnout than the United States. In 2008, 57.5 percent of American cast in the presidential election. The rate of voter turnout in U.S. is decreasing as times goes by. American citizens have to take care this issue as a serious thing. This mean lot of people is not doing their responsibility as a citizen. As Rebecca argued, it is better to avoid the Election Day on a weekday and change it to a weekend. If American people do not want to vote for many reasons like they do not care about political things or them have no time for voting in weekday, government has to change everything that they can make as possible as people to vote like changing the day into weekend or expand more days for voting because government cannot force people to vote or make Election Days as an obligatory things. So government needs to do whatever they can to make people become comfortable to vote. However, there is wrong information in Rebecca’s argument. From Rebecca’s blog, she stated that the reason people are not voting is because the Election Day is on Tuesday during a weekday and she said except the United States, all other democratic country votes in a weekend. In fact, lots of democratic countries’ Election Day are on a weekday too. For example, South Korea’s next Election Day will be on December 20, 2017, which is Wednesday. This means that America cannot blame their turnout rate is low because their Election Day is on a weekday, but changing into the weekend will definitely make people more comfortable to vote. It is our own responsibility to vote as a citizen, but a country can make better and comfortable way for us to participate in the important country event.
ReplyDeleteOn Monday June 20th, 2016 my classmate Rebecca Choi posted a Blog 5 titled: Let’s Change Our Election Days! Rebecca makes a great point, that even though the United States’ government is run by the people and for the people, it seems that only about 50% of Americans participate by voting. Rebecca states that people say many Americans don’t vote because they don’t care enough, but the reality isn’t that at all. Rebecca argues that the issue is that America is the only democracy to hold its elections on Tuesdays while other democracies vote on the weekends, or have a day off work to vote, or have more than one day to vote, so that limits many Americans from even having the chance to vote. Her argument was backed up with a reasoning and a solution so I was convinced that we should change the voting day to weekends or make it a holiday to get more people involved and there would finally be no more excuses! The only thing I want to add, is that the truth is I feel like there is in fact a small percentage of Americans that simply just don’t care to vote because they don’t realize that their participation matters, but I think those are mostly the younger adults. There’s also another group of people that might not be politically knowledgeable enough to consider voting.
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