DN editorial: Voting should not be a chore in this day and age

THIS IS THE season of the year when you can count on editorial writers and columnists to lament the lack of voter participation in elections. On Tuesday's ballot, for instance, voters were electing their party nominees for president, the U.S. Senate, and a variety of state offices.

Early reports Tuesday suggested turnout was strong, but that would be an exception. Voter participation has been declining for years.

With a sigh and a "Oh, woe is us," we end our lamentation. Now, to brass tacks.

One way to get people to vote is to make it easier for people to vote.

In Pennsylvania, voting is a one-day sale: The polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. - on a Tuesday, no less - and if you can't make it, you are out of luck.

Whoever picked Tuesday as the official Election Day? As it happens, Congress did. In 1845.

States were then holding elections at varying times. The goal was to set a uniform Election Day for federal elections, especially for the presidency, so all the votes could be counted before the Electoral College met.

November was picked because legislators knew the harvest would be over by then.

Tuesday was selected because, in those days, people had to travel on foot or horseback to the county seat, where the polling place was located - a process that could take two days.

Congress didn't want voters to have to travel on the Sabbath. And it didn't want to intrude on Wednesday, which was the traditional market day.

So when was the last time you rode your horse to the polls?

Times have changed in the 171 years since Congress passed the law setting the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. For one thing, the U.S. then was an agrarian nation with a population of 20 million. Today, it is a largely urban nation of 323 million.

Distance to the polls is no longer a problem. Time is.

A number of states have recognized modern reality and passed laws to allow early voting. Sometimes it's through use of mail-in ballots. In others, regional polling places are open in the weeks before the election, so people can walk in and cast their vote.

Thirty-four states allow some type of early voting. Pennsylvania is not among them.

There is no reason why Pennsylvania can't join most of the rest of the nation to come up with a way to allow people to vote early and vote more easily, other than the fact that incumbents often aren't interested in making voting easier. Republicans often champion measures to make voting harder (recall the voter ID fiasco) in an attempt to blunt the effect of so many Democratically inclined urban and minority voters.

There are other good ideas for making voting easier. One, currently championed by Sen. Bernie Saunders, would be to make Election Day a national holiday called Democracy Day, so people won't have to take off work to vote. Others have suggested moving Election Day to Monday - and making that a holiday.

Meanwhile, Washington, Oregon and Colorado have eliminated on-site voting entirely and instead mail ballots - with return envelopes -to all registered voters.

When this election year is over, we urge elected officials to seriously examine ways to make it easier to vote. Yo, guys, it's not 1845.