What would happen if Americans voted on different days? Suppose Republicans voted on Tuesday and Democrats voted on Wednesday. Would this be better than everyone voting on the same day? Would it be more fair and less confusing?

Like hell it would! One reasonable complaint Republicans had about the 2000 presidential elections — famously decided, in the end, at the Supreme Court — was that some television networks called the State of Florida for Al Gore before polls had closed in the westernmost Florida Panhandle, which lay in the Central Time Zone, an hour behind the rest of the state in...