Astate lawmaker wants to make liquor available on Election Day in Utah. Currently, state law prohibits sales of wine or liquor at clubs or restaurants during the hours that the polls are open. The law has clearly outlived whatever usefulness it may have once had.

"This whole notion of not being able to drink on the day you're voting is just archaic," said Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, said in a news report. "You can get completely liquored up at home and go vote if you want to, or you can have a glass of wine at home while you fill out an absentee ballot, yet on Election Day you can't walk into a restaurant at noon and have a glass of wine. It seems there's a bizarre inconsistency."

Agreed. There is no reason that one Tuesday should be different from any other. It's not as though mobs of drunken partisans are going to ride into town on horseback, shoot their guns in the air and start brawls at the polls. These days, brawls are for American Fork High School football games, not voting places.

Any consumption of alcohol tends to run against the teetotaling tradition of Utah Valley. But there are drinkers in our midst whose lunches should not be disrupted. It's bad enough for them that the state liquor store is closed on Election Day -- why torment them furtherfi

After all, the father of our nation saw no problem with mixing voting and drinking. George Washington, running for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757, is said to have handed out an average of a quart-and-a-half of rum, wine, beer or hard cider for each voter.

As the nation grew, abuses of alcohol drew the ire of reformers. Many zeroed in on the political machines in big cities, which bought votes with booze.

We don't think that technique would work very well around here. At the same time, we're certain that the election's integrity is not preserved by one's inability to get a drink at a club or restaurant. The ban on sales only cuts down on the amount of taxes collected.

Utahns have not always leaned hard against liquor. Many early Mormons caught the spirit in more ways than one. Until 1921, only habitual drunkards were barred from temple attendance.

In 1933, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, repealing national Prohibition. That's right, dry Utah was the state that put drinking over the top once again in America.

We understand why Utah's legislators no longer ply voters with alcoholic beverages. But perhaps they can at least show some common sense and get rid of a really silly law. The state's ban on Election Day liquor sales should go the way of spats, derby hats, buggy whips and other relics of a bygone era.