Grok the Vote

As many out there know (hopefully close to the number 300,000,000, since that's how many people live in the nation now), today is Election Day in the United States.

While I'd like a lot of people to go out and vote, especially in an off year, I don't expect it to happen. And I totally expect the block of wood to become the Governor, again. So, I'm not really going to talk about that.

Instead, I'm going to talk about how stupid it is to have Election Day be on a Tuesday.

Way back in the day, it made sense. Men (because that's the only gender which could vote) who lived on farms could leave their farm on Monday, ride into town that evening, spend the night getting drunk and whoring it up even though they had a wife and kids at home, vote on Tuesday morning with their heads pounding, do some shopping for supplies and such, and head back to their farms that afternoon to arrive that night. It was like this for that day of travel and to keep people from traveling on Sundays because God wouldn't like that (Unless the person was Jewish because then God didn't want them to travel on Saturday, but back then all Jews were Satan's children; or Native Americans who were kept moving around the country or drunk.), so no voting on Saturday or Sunday.

Today, that doesn't make much sense. I'm betting that that even a farmer who lives in Wankerville, Nowhere has a car that can get him, his wife, and any voting children into town on voting day, any day of the week. (I guess God doesn't mind people traveling on Sunday. Hell, He doesn't mind them going to Denny's and that's a sin, right?) Folks who live in the suburbs and work in a city (or worse, live in Lancaster or Victorville and commute into Los Angeles) have the problem. They live an hour, or more, away from where they work, but they have to vote near where they live. (And, let's face it, most people aren't going for the absentee ballots or the early voting. I don't understand it, but there you have it. Maybe all the states should go the way Oregon did and just insist on mail in ballots.)

So, on Election Day, our voter, who lives in the 'burbs, has to be at work by eight, but to get there on time, she has to leave at 6:30 to ride in the car pool. Polls don't open until 7, so that's no good. She does live in California, which means her employer has to give her "reasonable time off to vote," but according to the poster hanging in the break room "reasonable time" is an hour, that means she could vote at seven and then drive herself to work, but by then, traffic is so insane it'll take her more than two hours to get to work, not to mention trying to find parking and paying for a temporary permit.

The polls, though, don't close until 8, so maybe after work. Work ends at 5, but since she left with the carpool in the morning, she has to wait for everyone to get back to the car, which means they won't leave until closer to 5:45. The drive that takes about 80 minutes in the morning always take closer to 100 minutes in the evening, which gets her home close to 7:30. That would be, barely enough time to get to her polling place, if she didn't have a family, who she could probably take with her, but she's so exhausted it's easier to pop a frozen lasagna into the oven and sit down and try not to fall asleep before the food burns.

I know that's all a little over the top, but still wouldn't it be easier for nearly everyone if Election Day was on Saturday. That way, the only thing most registered voters can blame not voting on is not wanting to wait in line. And, honestly, if not wanting to wait in a line is your reason for not voting, maybe it's good that you're not.