Can it really be true that two-thirds of Coloradans, and 55%-60% of New Mexicans, have cast their ballots? Those numbers seem huge. Though, anecdotally, it fits. Everyone I know who has voted early, be they in DC or California or the Mountain West or the Midwest, has returned with a story that sounded a whole lot closer to normal voting than early voting: The lines were an hour, the polling places were packed, the ballot workers were already exhausted. As Ryan Avent says, "Focusing on what the polls might look like on Tuesday misses the important fact that we’ve been having the election, every day, for a couple of weeks now." That said, the move towards a multi-week election, which is happening in an organic and fairly inchoate fashion across the states, is probably something we should eventually try and standardize nationally. There's really no reason that voting standards should be confusing and unpredictable and in such constant flux that most folks rely on unsolicited phone calls from campaign volunteers to explain the rules their county is using that year. At the least, the move towards early voting is a tacit admission that Tuesday voting doesn't make sense for most people. And why should it? It was instituted before cars, when you needed a day of travel to get into town to vote, and when you couldn't schedule anything on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (worship days) or Wednesday (market day). All the more reason that we should listen to the "Why Tuesday?" folks and move the official "day" of voting to a full weekend.
