The Ministry of Justice is consulting on whether to move to weekend voting, as a way of increasing turnout. They want to know what are the barriers to voting.  To me, it doesn't matter which day of the week an election is held on, as if your vote doesn't stand much of a chance of counting there may be little incentive to actually vote at all. Along with all the other reasons - and there are many factors involved - the electoral system is undoubtably a significant one.

Handily, there is a open-ended final question on the consultation where this type of argument can be made.  There's a website www.makevotescount.org.uk set up especially to respond to this specific part of the consultation.
 

As this is an official consultation, all the responses get logged, summarised and reported back - within Government and publicly.  To give you some context, the MoJ received less a thousand separate responses in total to all their past Governance of Britain consultations (war powers, attorney general, flag flying, managing protest around Parliament). So it is defnitely worth submitting something.

A copy of 'America goes to the polls - a report (pdf) on voter turnout in the 2008 Presidential Primary' has just landed in my inbox.  As might be expected, there are some real wow stats:

1) More than one in four of all eligible voters participated in a primary or caucus. This is a rate not seen since 1972, when the voting age was lowered to 18.

2) Voter participation in Democratic primaries was up 112% and caucuses by 223% compared to 2004 - ie.the turnout in Democratic primaries doubled and tripled in the caucuses.

3) Youth participation rose at a faster rate than any other age group. Turnout by voters ages 18-29 went up for the third consecutive national election year (2004 and 2006).

But alongside these startling facts, there is a salient message: besides competitive elections (which are very important) or the date of the primary (weekday / weekend), a number of factors influenced voter turnout. Election Day Registration and Early Voting most likely contributed to higher turnout in many states.