Early voting not the way

While many of you were excited to vote on Election Day, more than 23,000 registered voters had already cast their vote in Monroe County before last weekend.

Early voting has many benefits that make its implementation in this election understandable. Most importantly, early voting helps reduce crowding at the polls on Election Day.

However, when it comes to making our elections run smoother, the U.S. government should simply expand operations on Election Day rather than continuing early voting.

We have plenty of alternatives to deal with current problems. One way to do this is to make Election Day a national holiday.

This would make the process less time consuming. As a national holiday, Election Day would allow many more workers to get out and vote. Also, because Election Day is on a Tuesday, people probably won’t be able to make it into a three-day weekend. Voting will be the most exciting thing to do on a cold Tuesday in November.

The government should also make an effort to expand voting sites.

More voting sites would make individual sites less crowded and also make voting less costly. With high fuel prices, simply getting to voting sites takes a hefty chunk out of the pocketbook. By having more voting sites spread out throughout each county, voting will be less costly and even closer. Voting would become a social experience, where the voter could interact with his or her community.

Early voting rushes the voter’s decision.

It’s not out of the question that one of the candidates could make a colossal change to their campaign immediately before Election Day. Imagine that Sen. John McCain had decided to drop Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate.

This could make voters, who did not want to vote for McCain because of Palin, reconsider voting for him. Imagine if one of the candidates makes a fool of him or herself like Howard Dean did in the 2000 Democratic primaries. The possibilities are endless.

Although the candidates inculcated the public with their talking points, they could change or mess up at any moment. Election Day, as a national holiday with expanded voting sites, is the best bet for democratic voting.

Besides, voting is twice as fun on an emotionally charged Election Day.