Americans once gathered on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to pick the nation's leaders. Election Day was a day of civic engagement when neighbors met at the polls and then cast their ballots. In the past twenty-five years, however, America has undergone a revolution in voting unlike anything it has experienced in the first 200 years of its history. We have created a system of many mini-election-days leading up to the main event. Today nearly a quarter of Americans vote before Election Day, either by absentee ballot or at early voting places. In 1980, only one in twenty...
Americans once gathered on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to pick the nation's leaders. Election Day was a day of civic engageme...