Yesterday, aagcobb posted some comments on how to fix the voting situation in the country, and I never got a chance to respond in the thread.

My take?

It involves shifting when elections are held. Midterm congressional elections will stay where they are, but municipal 4 year terms will be shifted so that they coincide with presidential election years. All primaries in the state will coincide with the election days set for those presidential election years.

That means that school districts wont have separate election dates where there’s minimal turnout on who decides what the budgets will be, voting on the budgets themselves, etc. A lot of districts hold those elections at random dates when there’s little chance anyone is paying attention, let alone voting on these budgets that ultimately affect home prices and desirability to live in localities.

It would mean that you maximize turnout on elections at all levels and people are most focused on politics.

Oh, and I’d scrap the idea that we need to have a staggered primary election where Iowa and New Hampshire lead the primaries, though I know that a lot of states wouldn’t go for that since they’d lose what little influence they have on the process already. Hold all the primaries on the same day. And yes, that would mean that candidates would end up focusing on the big states rather than the little ones. But that’s the same strategy it takes to win in November. Alternatively, condense all the primaries into a 2 week period - allow IA and NH to lead, but then have Super Tuesday and Super Thursday or what have you. It could potentially result in less money spent on elections and campaigning since the condensed period reduces the time candidates have to message.