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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Denmark has one of the highest voter turn outs in the world at somewhere between 80 to 85%. Our elections are always on Tuesdays. So I don't buy the idea that voting on a Sunday would yield higher turn outs.

If voters can't be bothered to show up for elections every two to four years, then maybe something else is wrong. Maybe voters don't feel like their vote matter, or maybe you're making it to hard to vote (like in the US where you're not automatically a registered voter).

That being said, voting during the weekend might help avoid queue at the polls, though I never experienced having to wait more then 10 minutes to cast my vote.

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Remember that the US citizens have way fewer days off than most Europeans.

If, additionally, voting day isn't in the weekend or a public holiday then I'd assume that would decrease turnout measurably.

I don't see your point. Danes vote on Tuesdays, either before work or in the afternoon or evening. We don't take the day of to vote. Why can't Americans do the same?

The day of the week isn't the issue. I would find it hard to believe that an American would choose not to vote, because it would take 30 minutes out of his or her evening.

Ok, I see.

Well it's at least a compound problem, because in some places in America (usually poor cities and college campuses) voting can take hours.

In the suburbs you'll probably be out in a few minutes though.

So you either give the day off, or you come up with a solution to fix the underlying mismanagement of resources.

Why? Bad planning?

When I was a student, I was registered to vote in central London. The polling place was still only responsible for roughly the same number of people as some place in the countryside. There were simply more of them in the centre of a city.

Deliberately bad planning. Polling locations and times are determined by folks with a vested interest in choosing who votes for them, not in letting voters choose who holds office.

That's definitely a problem in the system. Organizing the election should be independent from political interests. Not having that independence is a far bigger problem than anything else.

In the US, employers are required by law to give time off to vote.

So can you go vote near your workplace instead of near your home?

In Belgium we have to vote at a designated location (almost always a school building) but it's on a Sunday.

That really varies by jurisdiction. Currently, I'm encouraged to vote at a particular place, but if I wanted to vote somewhere else in the county I could. ISTR some cities I've lived didn't even assign a particular place, so I just voted where it was convenient. One probably couldn't get a ballot for city elections, in some other city.

In the US one ordinarily votes at one's precinct. How far that is depends on the jurisdiction. In Washington, DC, it is about a kilometer from my house. In suburban Maryland, with slightly lower population density, it was about two kilometers.

It would be less practical here to let you vote near work rather than home, for there are many minor political offices that cover a small district. In the first few hundred meters on the way to work, I cross from Ward 4 into Ward 1. I couldn't tell you how many Advisory Neighborhood Commission districts I would pass through.

. Early voting and vote by mail have been greatly expanded in the US over the last couple of decades. I believe that Oregon uses voting by mail exclusively now.

I think that would be news to most employers in the US, mainly because it appears to not be true and the details vary wildly by state

https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace

"In some states, the law designates a specific amount of time that workers must be allowed off to vote. ... Some states require your employer to give you time off only if you will not have enough time to vote before or after work, while the polls are open. Most but not all states prevent your employer from firing or disciplining you because you take time off to vote."

In the state I live in, there is no law requiring your employer to give you time off to vote.

Netherland also has elections during weekdays (not sure if it's the same day of the week every time), and has voting turnouts near 80% for national elections. Local and European elections are much, much lower, however.

What helps is that it's really easy to vote. The only thing you need to do in advance is not lose the voting card that arrives in the mail, and hopefully pay attention to the positions various parties have on the issues. You have to do a bit more if you want to authorize someone else to cast your vote, or if you want to vote at a different voting station, but otherwise you just walk to the voting station before or after work and that's it.

That's it. No registration in advance, no waiting in long lines, no having to travel to the other side of town. For most people, the voting station in right next door.

At the last election in Hong Kong (held a week ago), even though it was on a Sunday, one particular polling station was so bad that even though polling closed at 10:30pm, the last person in that queue only got to cast his vote at 2:30am -- over 4 hours wait.

I myself had to wait for 45 minutes that afternoon.

I guess my point is, if the government doesn't want you to vote there's all sorts of things it can do, weekends or not.

> Denmark has one of the highest voter turn outs in the world at somewhere between 80 to 85%.

Australia has 95%. To be fair, we have mandatory voting.

So does Greece and their turnout in 2015 was only 66%.

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