We don’t have the numbers yet, but most likely the elections Tuesday drew an average level of turnout for off-off-year contests--which means less than one-third of voters participating.
 
Our turnout, which is basically the lowest among Western democracies, is pretty embarrassing. The spectacularly high turnouts we see in countries like Australia and Italy come because of coercive measures we would never accept--denial of government benefits if citizens don’t vote. But we are at the other end of the scale: We throw all kinds of burdens and barriers in the way.

On Monday, I joined Andrew Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and pollsters Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake at a press conference for the organization “Why Tuesday?” The question in the organization’s title refers to Election Day--which in fact was set in 1845 as the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, in order to fit agrarian schedules for farming, harvesting and going to market. Tuesday was the day most eligible voters traveled to their county seats if they had business to conduct, thus making it easier for them to vote at the same time.

Young and I, along with former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and others, have been asking that question as part of a larger effort to rethink and reform our election administration and system. Yes, I know Congress engaged in a Herculean effort to pass the Help America Vote Act in 2002--the first serious federal reform of elections ever. But HAVA has not been fully implemented, much less fully funded (an even more difficult goal now with budget cutbacks looming). We did not have an election catastrophe in November 2004 as we had in November 2000, but anyone who looks closely at elections knows we barely dodged a bullet.

Goeas and Lake conducted a poll of voters on election issues, and they found that only 52 percent of Americans believe our elections are fair and that votes are actually counted and recorded. Only one-third of African-Americans are in that category. They also found that two-thirds of Americans want Congress to make voting easier, and that 45 percent would favor moving elections to the weekend. Weekend voting was especially popular among young voters, African-American voters and working parents. Goeas noted that the lowest turnout comes from women with small children at home--no great surprise, perhaps, but also a sign that moving elections to the weekend would not necessarily favor Democrats.

Moving Election Day to the weekend is no panacea. It ought to be done in conjunction with a series of other reforms, some of which have been suggested by election officials and others of which were included in the recommendations by the Carter-Baker Commission on election reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.

Their commission has been given a bum rap, heavily criticized for one of its recommendations--that we move to a required photo ID for voting. Carter-Baker had made this recommendation with a series of caveats. Under current federal law, there will be a requirement in a few years that a photo identification, the REAL ID, be used for homeland security purposes. If such a requirement is to exist anyhow, why not use it as well for voting? At the same time, the commission said that any photo ID requirement must provide the IDs free of charge to everyone who lacks them and make them readily accessible. The panel did not accept the noxious Georgia standard, which is a latter-day poll tax.

But leave the controversial ID requirement aside and the other recommendations are important and necessary. These include moving rapidly to update statewide voter registration lists, to make them interoperable across states, to make sure that polling places have enough machines with adequate paper trails for validation and recounts, and to have enough trained poll workers.

Election officials have their own interesting recommendation, building on successful experiments conducted in such places as Larimer County, Colo., and Harris County, Texas: To consolidate voting precincts into a smaller number of vote centers on Election Day. Larger centers would permit consolidation of equipment and a concentration of poll workers, thus accommodating more voters easily and smoothly, saving resources and making voting easier. Of course, to do so would require things such as mobile vans cruising neighborhoods to pick up voters and take them to the centers and back to their own neighborhoods, so that polling places are accessible to those without cars or alternate transportation options.

So here is my Wal-Mart approach to voting. First, make Election Day a 24-hour period, from noon Saturday to noon Sunday, removing any Sabbath problems and eliminating the burden for working people who can vote only early in the morning or after the workday and who often face two-hour lines at peak periods. Wal-Mart stores that stay open 24/7 do not usually have huge lines at the checkout counters.

Second, allow early voting on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before the weekend of Election Day, so that people who would otherwise be away for the weekend can go to the polls and vote. This eliminates the problem that absentee balloting has--the extended period of several weeks that has far too many people casting their ballots before they assimilate the information from the final days of a campaign. It also curbs the expansion of voting by mail, which erodes the civil culture of voting together on Election Day and builds in far greater opportunities for undue influence by removing the zone of privacy that a voting booth provides.

Third, expand election centers to create a more efficient and pleasant environment for voting. Wal-Mart stores are large entities that consolidate products, provide adequate parking and have enough people working there to answer questions and handle consumer needs.

Fourth, create the kind of registration system that allows voters going to the election centers to give their names, addresses (and, I would add, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers) and have a computer provide a ballot that allows them to vote on federal, state and local races to fit their residence.

These reforms would entail some added expense, but such outlays would be trivial in the context of a $3 trillion budget and a $12 trillion economy. If Wal-Mart can stay open 24/7/365, surely our polling places can stay open 24/1/once every two years.

Our election system is a bit reminiscent of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. We had made half-hearted and underfunded efforts to put an adequate system in place, but it was clear that a perfect storm would overwhelm the system and create genuine catastrophe. I hope, for the sake of our democracy, that the complacency disappears soon.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.