A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
The olympics don't take only one day, the paralympics are also a thing, as are the winter olympics. The olympics that happen on leap years are the summer olympics and February isn't in summer.
Early voting takes longer than a day, and there are elections other than presidential elections that happen with greater frequency.
And February 29 doesn't happen on years ending in 00 unless the year ends in 000.
EDIT: scroll down to see how confidently wrong I was about leap years!
To add to this, weather conditions on November 5 are likely to be more temperate than February 29. November 5 can definitely still have bad weather, but you would be making in-person voting overall objectively statistically more difficult by pushing it into the end of February thanks to snow, where November doesn't even crack the top 5 months for the most snowfall (and we're talking early November here).
You would also be giving some president/Congress ~~three-ish extra months~~ nine-ish fewer months of a term for literally no reason by shifting it all the way to February 29, unless you wanted to roll out some decades-long scheme to incrementally push it there.
Edit: that also leaves the fact that you would have (presumably the first day of) one of the most watched events on Earth taking place on the same day as the general election, meaning arguably one of the few times when minute-by-minute 24-hour news coverage is necessary for the election, you'd get it interspersed with a ton of Olympics stuff, and you'd likely also have a decent chunk of people staying home to watch the Olympics instead of voting, further depressing turnout in addition to possible weather issues.
To move it to Feb 29th you'd have either a 9-month shorter term, or a 3 years and 3 months longer one.
Oh wait, yeah, you're right, I accounted for "late the next February" without taking into account that wouldn't be a leap year. Sometimes math escapes me.
And February 29 doesn't happen on years ending in 00 unless the year ends in 000.
That's not correct. Centuries are not leap years, unless they're divisible by 400 (not 1000). So, 2400 will be a leap year, but 3000 will not.
I stand corrected.
February isn’t in summer.
Yeah, it is.
lemmy.nz, I see.
The Olympics you know are in fact Summer Olympics. Guess what there's winter Olympics. Probably 29th Feb is a bit late to catch enough good snow
A leap year is every 4 years, but not every 400 years. If you could only vote on Feb 29 you’d have gone 8 years without a vote between 1996 and 2004.
Not quite—it’s every four years, excluding years divisible by 100, but not excluding years divisible by 400. So 2000 was a leap year, but it was the first century in 400 years for which that was the case (using the Gregorian calendar).
2000 was a leap year. Source: I was there.
The math on the 400 thing is the other way around.
you'd have gone 8 years without a vote between 1996 and 2004
On second thought, OP is absolutely correct and we need to invent a time machine to fix this mistake.
Elections happen all over the world at different times for different lengths.
Why would we all sync the Olympics to America?
US defaultism
There are other people pointing out all the pratical reasons why this isn't the case.
But I like the spirit and vibe of this idea, good shower thought.
Because we dont have a feb 29 EVERY four years...
In 2000, there was a February 29, because it was a multiple of 4, and despite being a multiple of 100 it was also a multiple of 400. It was the exception of the exception of the exception. My parents signed their divorce on that day. Which makes it extra memorable for me. What a day 😀 !!
One day for the Olympics would be a pretty mad rush at the moment
leap years don't happen every four years. there are exceptions.
we would skip an election every 100 years or so
yeah. would not want trump in office on that one.
He would have argued 2020 is divisible by 100 according to the best mathematicians.
I know its kinda a joke but I could so see it. Honestly I could see him declaring no leap year whatever the year is and claim the president can do that. It would definitely be a bad idea.
To me the most baffling thing is that it's not on the weekend in the USA AFAIK, like why the fuck would you have it on say a Tuesday when people need to work, pick up their kids from school etc, you might argue that still some people work on the weekends but that's a much lesser percentage and makes voting easier for a lot of people and who does have to work, they can mail it in.
Is literally every business closed all weekend where you live? Or is this just another case of people not realizing that lots of people work holidays and weekends?
Businesses are already legally required to let people leave to vote.
What are the voting times in America?
It differs by state, mine is 7am to 8pm in addition to the preceding 2 weeks for early voting.
Weird. In the UK it's 7am to 10pm and the queues are rather short
In Canada it's a half-day off, the polling places are many and varies, the waits are short and/because everything is hand-counted.
America uses a big-bang polling stations with machinery and demonstrations and gun nuts and intimidation of minorities and disenfranchisement , etc. It's a whole thing.
Not getting time off is part of the cruelty toward the working class.
Not having to confirm your identity seems like it's a jank but it's part to services the elites don't want to give the plebes, just hidden.
Lines are long, you May Not be generous with free water, in some places, counts take weeks on these fast computers and the legal challenges take months where ours is over in a night.
Safe to say it's gonna be super-different from a UK election.
In the US, the experience differs drastically, but you only see the long lines in the news.. My location has short lines, old retirees running the polls.
That's odd. In the UK the lines are never long. We don't get time off, but you can find time to drop in to the polling station anyway since they're open 7-22. Our counting and decision is decided overnight and the prime minister may change the day after that
It's the same in my country, but we have voting district thats like under a 1000 people.
I an guessing with the gerrymandered US districts they get quite weird and lots of people vote in the same place
School is usually cancelled because the schools are often polling locations.
It makes it all the more dumb to not have it as a national holiday.
You have answered your own question.
Pretty sure my polling place is open for more than 12 hours. Maybe it varies by state, but that should be a reasonable amount of time for over 99% of the population to get there. Obviously, some places are massively overrun and understaffed, especially in the "unfavorable" districts, but I've had no issues making it out in less than 10 minutes by leaving for work 20 minutes early.
The USA was designed for minority rule since forever.
At the time most Americans were farmers. Can't be Sunday because it's a Christian rest day, Wednesday neither because that's market day. They might have to travel a whole day to get there, so it can't be on Monday or Thursday either. Which leaves only Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.
Feb 29th should be election day, agree.
But the Olympics take weeks, homie.
Nope, we doing everything in one day.
I agree that Tuesdays are stupid. Make it a Monday, Federal Holiday. In addition, Nationalize mail-in ballots.
would allow too many minorities to vote, upset white people.
Yeah, we crackers enjoy our select charcuterie boards.
does it have pickles? cause then... yeah
You betcha!
Why ruin the birthday of all those people who only get one every four years?
It would become a holiday and the WoP would never win.
The Olympics happen every 2 years.
Elections happen every 6 months.