Election Day - Part 2

I'd like to address another issue concerning elections today as well.  Young people may be generally apathetic towards voting, but there are also greater hurdles for college students to get over before they can legally vote as compared to their older counterparts.

First off, many college students register at home and must submit an absentee ballot.  That would be fine except that you can't cast an absentee vote the first time you do so.  You have to physically attend the polls for your first election, so a lot of students get discouraged because they would have to drive all the way back home (in the middle of the week) just to vote.

Next, voting takes much more effort and much longer than it really should.  The act of casting your ballot may take 2 to 5 minutes, but there are lines, questions about which polling station you should attend, and time conflicts with class and working hours.

I think voting should be moved online personally.  I voted in person today with nothing but a voter registration card.  No one checked a picture ID, they simply asked me if I still lived at the same address.  This seems wildly easy to lie about and I was amazed that they did not even care to look at my driver's license.  Well, I did not live at the same address, so as I expected, I had to fill out some paperwork and then drive to another polling station about 8 blocks away.  For people who commute 45 minutes to work every day, driving to the polls near their home must be a real chore.  Of course, there's early voting, but personally I like to see the campaign all the way through before I decide on my candidate.  Anyway, the rules for this process are horribly archaic and over-complicated.  The process does not eliminate the possibility of fraud, it just makes it more work to get to the polls.

But, I won't complain without making at least some suggestions:

1. Why can't voting day be a national mandatory holiday? If the government expects people to show up, shouldn't they at least be allowed off work for half of the day?  For students or young people working a menial job or attending class, driving to their respective polling place may be difficult if not impossible to do.

2. Voting online.  I think this one will happen eventually.  There is no reason to have to attend a physical polling location if they don't even check your picture ID, and this could be checked on many people's personal computers (think webcams, etc).  Of course, sending sensitive voting data through the interweb scares people, so it really depends on improvements in security in the coming years.

Anyway, enough for election day, and if you made it through all that, thanks for reading!