Considering the historical stakes of the 2016 presidential election , it’sprobablysafe to say you ’re more interested with serious issues than affair like the daylight of the week on which Election Day fall . But with the end of the nightmarish campaign just hour away , John Oliver raised a damn good question you could ponder on your way home from your local polling location : how is vote on Tuesdays still a thing ?
The question of why America continues to hold Election Day on Tuesdays has plainly come up several times before , but on Sunday ’s episode ofLast Week Tonight , Oliver dedicate a brief section to provide the critical and humourous reexamination the issue deserves . As the telecasting explicate , voting on Tuesdays is the answer of an 1845 law that was passed to give Americans enough meter to travel long distances to polling locations without miss the Sabbath over the weekends . Monday , essentially , was meant to be a traveling day . But today , it ’s dependable to say that balloting on Tuesdays is actuallypreventingmany people from handily couch their vote , consider all the videos you ’ve seen of stupidly long line of descent at polling sites , stories of people worry about crucial hourly pay at work , and the United States ' embarrassingly low voter turnout .
So what the hell should we do to make voting in our major elections better ? Well , as the television suggests , expanding early voting to all 50 states , moving Election Day to a weekend day ( like several other countries ) , and/or hold Election Day a national vacation are just a few reasonable solutions . They almost maketoo muchsense to in reality happen , though , right ?
Until we move Election Day to a twenty-four hour period of the week that , you eff , actually makes sense , we ’ll just have to deal with the inconvenience of vote around work , doctors appointments , and the other demand of lifespan on a damn weekday . All of this " so husbandman who have been dead for more than a hundred wo n’t have an self-justification to miss church building , " grant to the telecasting . Yeah , feel free to permit out an aggravate sigh right about now .
Inconvenience or not , you well get out there and vote . Your " I ’m too busy " excuse is basically bullshit now that an American astronautcast his absentee ballotfrom aboard the freaking International Space Station . Please , pleasevote .
Sign up herefor our daily Thrillist e-mail , and get your location of the honest in food / drink / playfulness .
