French Turnout Has Tweeps Talking
Sunday, May 6th, 2012
As we were saying… France today voted for president with an 80% turnout. Today, as in a Sunday. And why do we vote on Tuesday again in the United States, where our turnout averages 50%? Oh, that’s right. No good reason.
One of our major disappointments with the recent U.S. Government Accountability Office study about implementing nationwide weekend voting was that it didn’t look at voter turnout in other countries with weekend voting. The good news is, people are starting to take notice.
Today a few of Twitter’s boldface names — and many more — pointed out how silly it is America votes smack in the middle of the work week. First came the realization that France had turnout we’ve only dreamed of in the United States, by Anthony De Rosa of Reuters.
French presidential election turnout was over 80%
— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) May 6, 2012
After his tweet, the conversation starting picking up.
BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski retweeted De Rosa, and Fernando R. Vila of Univision responded that Sunday voting wouldn’t be a bad thing here in the States.
US should have elections on Sunday too RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: RT @AntDeRosa: French presidential election turnout was over 80%
— Fernando R. Vila (@nandorvila) May 6, 2012
We were honored to get the hat tip in the funny Twitter feed of @pourmecoffee, who also notice De Rosa’s tweet and added our URL in a retweet.
j.mp/KFqVGR RT @AntDeRosa: French presidential election turnout was over 80%
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) May 6, 2012
And then De Rosa did the same:
Want to do something for middle class voters? Move US election day to a weekend. whytuesday.org via @pourmecoffee
— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) May 6, 2012
There were many other awesome tweets throughout the day about why it’s silly the United States doesn’t vote on the weekend.
Turnout in French election was over 80%.Could it have something to do with their election being held on the weekend? whytuesday.org
— Paul Ledesma (@PaulLedesma) May 6, 2012
Seriously. Weekend voting please. RT @pourmecoffee: j.mp/KFqVGR RT @AntDeRosa: French presidential election turnout was over 80%
— Eric Geller (@erier2003) May 6, 2012
Dismal participation in US is no surprise: whytuesday.org RT @AntDeRosa: French presidential election turnout was over 80%
— Victoria Ramirez (@victoriaramirez) May 6, 2012
one can dream for that in USA“@pourmecoffee: j.mp/KFqVGR RT @AntDeRosa: French presidential election turnout was over 80%”
— Christina Kuo (@christina_kuo) May 6, 2012
The conversation in the Twitterverse today echoes what we’ve been saying since our group was founded in 2005, particularly because in 15 states voting is literally Tuesday-or-bust. No early voting. No absentee voting without an excuse.
You can join us in supporting weekend voting by signing our petition asking Congress and the President to support the Weekend Voting Act.
May 11th, 2012 at 4:10 pm
I think the primary reason why people in the US do not vote is that they don’t understand why they should, or they simply don’t care. That’s the problem that needs to be addressed. Most US citizens do not take advantage of the time that most employers provide to vote either near their home or their work. I’m hard pressed to believe that these same people could be pulled away from things they’d much rather be doing on their day off to go vote.