What is the downside Lewis of adopting this amendment?
1) Currently elections begin on a thursday and end on a sunday. People are used to that - indeed they're used to them beginning late on a thursday, and complain when they begin early.
Under the framework proposed here, they can begin anytime between the friday of the current vote period, and the thursday thereafter. Sure, the SoFA has to tell people ahead when he plans on opening the booth, but I wonder how many people read that. The President tells us he believes SoFAs will if possible open the booth soon after midnight on Friday anyways, thus changing nothing, but there is no guarantee of it.
2) If the booth opens relatively late in the period (tuesday or later), the date of runoff elections in cases of ties is pushed a week further back due to the way it's worded. This isn't too bad in the case of regular elections (indeed, if STV for Class A seats is passed, it's a non-issue in regular elections), but it means vacancies may remain open for even longer. This is bad.
3) Because the Candidate Declaration Deadline is fixed in relation to the earliest possible commencement of the election, a later poll opening , at the SoFA's discretion, also means a longer interval between the filing deadline and the election, and a longer absentee voting period. Both of this is bad.
4) I'm also understandably miffed at how this fairly radical change was introduced without any publicity - most people including me initially thought it just fixes the marginally ambiguous word use of "midnight" in the current constitutional text. These kind of underhanded practices are exactly the kind of thing up with which we should never put!
I note that not one of the Senators who voted for the related bill has spoken in support of it - I don't think many of them understood what they were voting for.
