If it’s a multi day event, it’s probably that way for a reason. Partially the same as the solution to above.
Here in Latvia the "election day" is usually (always?) on weekend, but the polling stations are open for some (and different!) part of every weekday leading up. Something like couple hours on monday morning, couple hours on tuesday evening, couple around midday wednesday, etc. In my opinion, it's a great system. You have to have a pretty convoluted schedule for at least one window not to line up for you.
In most countries, in the elections you vote or the member of parliament you want. Presidential elections, and city council elections are held separately, but are also equally simple. But in one election you cast your vote for one person, and that's it.
With this kind of elections, many countries manage to hold the elections on paper ballots, count them all by hand, and publish results by midnight.
But on an American ballot, you vote for, for example:
- US president
- US senator
- US member of congress
- state governor
- state senator
- state member of congress
- several votes for several different state judge positions
- several other state officer positions
- several votes for several local county officers
- local sheriff
- local school board member
- several yes/no votes for several proposed laws, whether they should be passed or not
I don't think it would be possible to calculate all these 20 or 40 votes, if calculated by hand. That's why they use voting machines in America.Here in Indonesia, in a city of 2 million people there are over 7000 voting stations. While we vote for 5 ballots (President, Legislative (National, Province, and City/Regency), we still use paper ballots and count them by hand.
We've been closing a lot of polling places recently:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/protecting-vote-1-5-election-day-p...
If so, I see a lot to dislike. As the point I was making is you can’t anticipate what might come up. Just because it’s worked thus far doesn’t mean it’s designed for resilience. There’s a lot of ways you could miss out in that type of situation. I seems silly to make sure everything else is redundant and fault tolerant in the name of democracy when the democratic process itself isn’t doing the same.