A variant of (3) would be election months. In Virginia, where I vote, they have (what they call) a version of absentee voting where a person who expects to be absent on election day can go into a government office on the weekend for a couple of months before the election and cast their vote in person that way. We could expand that—every day of the week for October and maybe September, an office is open to accept in-person votes. We could even randomly assign each voter a particular day in that month(s)-long window to come in and cast their votes, so that we don’t end up with too many people in the same physical space on any one day.
LOL—I actually live in VA as well and 3 is really my preferred approach. I just think it should be fairly simple to accomplish, less upfront work I think. It will likely also reduce the challenges (see mfoley’s link) so keep the final results on track. But I’ve never actually voted (so kind of an odd question for me to be asking I suppose) and was completely unaware of that option.
Somewhat unrelated but perhaps might be interesting. If all states were to follow that plan—allow small numbers to come in an vote—if we allowed voters themselves to reserve an open voting slot in the 2 months before the official election day what would we see. I wonder what insights that might give value of campaigning in the last couple of months and what type of voter is influenced. Would those results match existing expectations?
A variant of (3) would be election months. In Virginia, where I vote, they have (what they call) a version of absentee voting where a person who expects to be absent on election day can go into a government office on the weekend for a couple of months before the election and cast their vote in person that way. We could expand that—every day of the week for October and maybe September, an office is open to accept in-person votes. We could even randomly assign each voter a particular day in that month(s)-long window to come in and cast their votes, so that we don’t end up with too many people in the same physical space on any one day.
LOL—I actually live in VA as well and 3 is really my preferred approach. I just think it should be fairly simple to accomplish, less upfront work I think. It will likely also reduce the challenges (see mfoley’s link) so keep the final results on track. But I’ve never actually voted (so kind of an odd question for me to be asking I suppose) and was completely unaware of that option.
Somewhat unrelated but perhaps might be interesting. If all states were to follow that plan—allow small numbers to come in an vote—if we allowed voters themselves to reserve an open voting slot in the 2 months before the official election day what would we see. I wonder what insights that might give value of campaigning in the last couple of months and what type of voter is influenced. Would those results match existing expectations?