A huge governmental shift took place on Tuesday, changing the balance of power in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party took control of the U.S. Senate away from the Democratic majority. Now Republicans control both the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

What makes this shift so amazing is that it was decided by a small few. With a population of 38.33 million people in California, only 11.5 million people voted, roughly 30 percent. In Fresno County, it was even less, with only 28.7 percent voter turnout.

Whether it’s uncharismatic politicians or a general apathy for the state of politics, the one thing that’s clear is that people just don’t care.

The upside to not caring is fewer stresses in your life. The downsides include having stresses put on you for things you could have helped prevent with your vote, the smaller (and often richer) group of citizens get to decide everything for everyone, and you also lose your ability to complain about the state of things because you didn’t care enough to participate in the process.

Apathy is a hard issue to tackle, but the government could at least take a shot at making voting easier for people. Here are some things that could help voter turnout:

Automatic voter registration

The single biggest deterrent to voting is that you have to register. If you received a notice on your 18th birthday that you were automatically registered to vote, people would be more inclined to make voting a part of their lives.

Furthermore, the process could be made even easier by signing people up automatically as a vote-by-mail voter.

Election Day registration

One of the biggest problems in our voting system is that there’s a cutoff for registration. After the last registration day, 15 days before an election, you cannot vote in the election if you’re not registered.

The fact that same-day registration isn’t allowed is a travesty. People who didn’t want to vote, but then had a change of heart, can be a deciding factor in an election.

One should be able to be unregistered, get angry with politics the night before the election and vote on Election Day. Enough said.

Make Election Day a national holiday

While employers are legally supposed to give you time off to vote, it can still be a hassle to drop what you’re doing at work or school and drive home to your polling place to vote.

For many people, it’s just too much work to interrupt the flow of their day to go home and come back. If everyone had the day off already, it would be much easier for people to find the time if they were at home on Election Day, and thus be near their polling places.

We already have two national holidays in November, but Election Day is far more important.

Redefine jury duty parameters

Many people fear registering to vote because they believe it will cause them to be called for jury duty, which is partly true.

Jury duty lists are compiled from voter registration, various DMV records and other sources.

People fear being called for jury duty more than they have the desire to vote. If the government revised the way it did jury duty, perhaps tying it to Social Security numbers or PG&E and other bills, it would lessen the stigma of voter registration.

Make voting even easier online

Voting is already pretty simple, especially if you’re registered to vote by mail, but voting needs to come into the 21st century.

We’re probably a decade or two away from the next voting innovation, but it seems to be the next likely step: voting online.

Everyone uses computers these days. If people were able to register to be an “online voter,” they’d be more likely to participate.

The biggest hurdle to overcome with voting online is hacking. It feels like everything is hackable these days so it could be a big problem if someone figured out how to hack an election and change the results.

The federal government would need to be the innovator because it is the only entity that can make hacking an election a federal crime with more harsh penalties, and states probably wouldn’t want the feds getting involved with their elections. Although, when you look at Florida, it seems that someone needs to step in and take over for those problem people who keep have issues with its elections.

The fact is, the government should be bending over backward to get people into voting booths. Every aspect of voter apathy should be met with ease of access.