On this election day in Wisconsin, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis.,
has an answer for those who claim working people are disenfranchised come
election day: I?m on it.

Mr. Kohl has introduced a new plan, appropriately dubbed the
?Weekend Voting Act,? to change the voting day from Tuesdays to weekends in an
attempt to increase turnout from Americans in the contiguous 48 states come
election time.

According to Mr. Kohl, the plan keeps polls open from 10
a.m. on Saturdays to 6 p.m. on Sundays to allow as much time as possible for
voters to come to the polls. This Weekend Voting Act draws from Mr. Kohl?s
previously co-sponsored Help America Vote Act, which aimed to improve elections
in the wake of the presidential debacle in Florida in 2000 ? only this time
around, the word ?improvement? is being used a bit too liberally.

While his weekend plans may ring true with millions of
working Americans, it forgets one American cliche truer today than the day it
was born: If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it.

Although Mr. Kohl?s idea sounds sexy, in that really
non-sexy political way, it flies in the face of rationale established long
before 2008: voting on Tuesday, as his press release acknowledges, was rooted
in maximizing turnout, not depressing it.

While people are at work and out-and-about on Tuesdays, they
are often doing the opposite come the weekend. Weekends are times for
relaxation, not for civics, which is one of the largest logical flaws in Mr.
Kohl?s plan. But sloth is only one bar for turning out the vote on weekends;
factoring in Sabbaths, weekend getaways and general voter apathy reveals a
picture far less civically engaged than the one Mr. Kohl envisions.

However, the Kohl camp will cite statistics claiming that
over 60 percent of Americans are working now, guaranteeing fewer have an option
to vote during the weekdays. This is meant to show there has been an increase
in working couples and individuals across all demographics, namely women[CM1], meaning that polls are unavailable to
those contributing to our economy.

However, simply because more people work in the modern world
we live in does not justify changing the date ? especially when it has worked
well in the past and even this year.

In fact, Alabama, a Super Tuesday state, had a higher
overall turnout rate than South Carolina, a weekend primary state. Don?t try
chalking this up to the primaries being different ? both states are of similar
cultural makeup, occurred within a few weeks of each other and had open
primaries.

So if things have always been like this, and it seems to
have worked reasonably well since, why change things so drastically now?

Mr. Kohl believes changing the amount of time the polls are
open is the correct method for increasing what is decidedly low turnout anyway,
and while he most certainly is correct in this assumption, we don?t need to
change the day elections are held to accomplish this goal.

Extending Election Day poll hours later in the evening would
afford those working and politically active citizens the ability to get to the
polls without waking up before the sun rises. Those who work from nine to five
would not need to wake up absurdly early to make it to the polling booth on
time, they wouldn?t need to cut out of work early to beat the lines in their
home precinct and they certainly wouldn?t have to sacrifice their well-earned
weekends to come in and voice their opinion.

However, for this to happen a change must occur first. And,
as Mr. Kohl charges, “if we are to grant all Americans an equal
opportunity to participate in the electoral process, and to elect our
representatives in the great democracy, then we must be willing to reexamine
all aspects of voting in America.?

Touche, Mr. Kohl, but reexamination hardly amounts to the
overhaul you?re suggesting.

?

Robert Phansalkar ([email protected]) is
a first-year law student.