Leo Tolstoy said that “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” Patience and time are the most significant aspects of life that most people struggle with and desire more of. They are also some of the main reasons why one third of U.S. voters do not vote, in my opinion. The first thing that comes to an average person’s mind when they think about election day are the long lines and when they are going to find time to vote. I would make changes to the election process to increase voter participation by remediating the two issues of the lack of time and patience.
The average eligible voter has a job during the times when the polls are open. Some people can go to the polls before or after work, but this is not the reality for everyone. One way to remediate this issue is to allow workers to have the day off or to excuse a few hours during the workday to allow people to vote. It is important that employers do not count those hours or day against the employees because that would discourage them from utilizing this option. Therefore, missing that time should not count against any accumulated leave and workers should be paid for those hours. An incentive that could be offered to businesses is a tax write off depending upon how many of their employees utilized that option to go vote.
Along with this contributing to time, it also contributes to decreasing the lines at polling locations. I’ve worked the polls for 3 years and what I recognized is that during the day (9am-5pm) the voter turnout is lower, and the lines are nearly nonexistent. However, the lines from 7am-9am and 6pm-9pm are painstakingly long. I can assume that this is due to the volumes of people coming to the polls before and after work. When you allow employees to come to the polls during the day, this will help decrease the lines at the polls. Decreasing the lines addresses the second main issue with the low voter participation, patience.
The average person does not have the patience to stand in long lines and that will discourage people from coming out to vote. However, when you allow people to vote throughout the day, it yields to an equal distribution of people going to the polls throughout the day instead of all at once before and after work. The equal distribution or voters going to the polls will yield to shorter lines. People will have more patience knowing that the lines are shorter.
Time and patience go hand and hand when it comes to voting and the election process. They are the main reasons why people do not come out to vote. Once these issues are remediated, I strongly believe that voter turnout will increase. It is important to note that this change will not occur instantly because the narrative around voting needs to change regarding how long it takes to vote. Once the narrative changes about the time it takes to complete the process, the one third of eligible voters not voting will decrease significantly.