Yesterday was another national election day. We don’t know all the winners and losers.
As usual, this was the most important election of your life since the last most important election of your lifetime.
Do you feel the nation’s end is near if your candidate or party lost?
Early voting has been going on for many weeks. In the years before the early voting, parties needed to find many volunteers to drive voters to the polls, and weather impacted voting volumes. With early voting, parties require fewer volunteers spread over many days, and voters can avoid rainy voting days.
In 2020, some states did not start counting mail-in ballots until election day. Thus, some nominees had a perception of voter fraud.
In Virginia, poll workers may feed early and mail-in vote forms into the counting machines before election day. Those votes cannot be counted, tabulated, or reported until the polls close on election day. So, Virginia was not one of the fuzzy procedural states.
Commentators have discussed making election day a national holiday. Their feeling is this would allow everybody to get out to vote.
A holiday would be great for all the salaried and government workers. The hard-working restaurant, hospitality, and retail employees would not get the day off unless the businesses were closed. And, since these employees are hourly, they would be losing pay for a day.
There are only two national holidays with most businesses closed, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even these days, essential police and fire departments must be staffed.
Another complaint of national elections is reporting results while polls are still open. This issue has happened in Florida when polls are closed based on local time, and the state has two time zones. West Coast citizens will hear reports from eastern states before the polls close.
Maybe we could have nationwide standard voting hours. No results could be announced until all polls are closed. Say we have polls open from 8 am to 8 pm Eastern Standard Time. This schedule would equate to 5 am to 5 pm on the west coast and 3 am to 3 pm in Alaska and Hawaii.
Retailers, restaurants, and bars may not open until 8 pm EST to make it an actual day off.