Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I-Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bogobom here.

In 2016, the United States ranked 26th in the world in voter participation,

with only 56% of eligible voters casting ballots in the 2016 presidential election.

That's better than the 2012 election's participation rate of 53.6%,

but still embarrassingly low compared with, say, Sweden's 87% participation rate.

Even though 2020 is shaping up to be a year of higher than normal voter turnout in the United States,

experts are predicting about 65% turnout, certainly nothing like 87%.

So what's up with that?

What motivates people to either vote or abstain from doing so?

Some simply don't like the candidates running in a given year, prefer to spend their time otherwise, or else somehow forget that there's an election.

But according to a Pew Research Center survey of registered voters who did not cast ballots in 2014, the biggest

single reason was schedule conflicts with worker school, which kept 35% of people who didn't vote

from exercising their rights.

Of course, there are increasing options in many places,

such as mail-in voting and early voting.

But election day schedule conflicts occur in large part

because of a federal law from 1845

which designated a weekday specifically the first Tuesday after the first

Monday of November as Election Day.

But an organization called Why Tuesday has advocated a solution that's already being

used successfully in Belgium, France, Germany, India, and other countries.

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