What we should push for is the Australian model -- mandatory voting enforced by a small tax penalty ($15 -20) if you don't vote. the tax penalty is forgiven if you can produce a doctor note or some other low-hurdle excuse. The point is not to penalize, but to acknowledge that you need robust participation for the process to work. The polls are open for an entire week, including the weekend, and allow for a liberal absentee process.

It's probably too easy to characterize as a loss of freedom (which it is, although a small one) to be realistic, but you would see an immediate end to the right-wing lunacy currently in or near power.

If the government wanted to enfranchise more people by making it easier to vote, they would do so.

They do not.

.... People who vote will vote whatever the date.... We could change it and make the voting last three days and still those who feel disengaged with the process wont vote.

In Washington we have gone to a 100% mail iin absentee ballot and closed the polls and still there is a fair share of ballots that end up in the landfill.

Convenience is not the answer.

it's a problem getting congress to do anything. Imagine the ridiculous debates about how the country will dissolve in anarchy if we change Election Day.

We'll be selling gasoline by the liter before that happens.

it would be easier for people to vote and "they" don't want that.

I say that because many people work weekends now.

... we will be able to move on to election reform.

My ideas:

Voting across a weekend (Friday, Sat & Sun, for example).

Polls stay open 12-14 hours to serve all work shifts.

Paper ballots & hand counts.

If it takes 3 days to do a complete accurate count, so be it.

Perhaps required voting participation like in Australia.

Reform of election financing of some sort.

works on Saturdays.
So, pair the change the voting date with voter id stuff and who benefits?

The people that want to vote, make it their business to do so.

what better way to honor vets than to exercise the right to vote that they fought to protect?
well, that and the oil we burn on the way to and from the polls....

besides, it's already a federal holiday, so no one can whine about workers getting an extra day off "just" to vote.

on a federal holiday.

While I know that your point was about the possible extra day off, I'm constantly astonished at the many office workers who don't seem to understand that actual living, breathing, human beings work shift work, and they're the reason you can get a hamburger, or buy some milk, or put gas in your car, or fly on an airplane, or be arrested, or treated at an emergency room, or any one of a zillion other things when the office workers have a day off.

I think that the early voting that every state (I think it's every state now) has, is the current correct solution to the problem. I've been voting early ever since it became possible, which for me was in 1980 when I lived in Virginia. They'd set up voting machines at the county courthouse, and since I was going to be out of the country on election day itself, I voted some time in early October.

but the federal government really can't do more than give its own employees the day off and encourage other employers to do likewise where feasible.

in any event, it would be an improvement to have it be on a holiday (or perhaps a weekend) rather than on an ordinary business day.

i also agree that early voting, mail-in voting, and online voting would be improvements as well, where implemented properly.

Maybe not for you, but lots of people work on Saturday and Sunday.