5 minutes

Yesterday was the nonpartisan primary voting day in my town.  Because of the arctic cold, my wife and I drove rather than walk the mile-and-a-half to our local community center.  I took note of the time when we arrived:

12:42 - park car

• walk into Community Center
• give my name to ladies at the table, receive a number
• take the number to the lady at the next table, receive ballot
• enter booth, mark ballot
• inset ballot into Marksense optical scanner, wait for beep
• take "I voted" sticker, walk out of polling place

12:47 - back in car

Five minutes to complete my civic duty.  Can't complain about that.  There are many arguments for revising/updating/computerizing the voting system in this country - all of which are well beyond the scope of this post -  but shortening the time required to vote is not in my view a pressing need (even granting that this was just a primary).

If I could make one change, it would be to make the November presidential election a national holiday, so that more people could vote.  To placate the business owners who want employees in the workplace, I would compensate by deleting the February President'sDayLet'sGoShopping holiday and tell people to honor their presidents by voting instead.