Is it time to make Election Day a federal holiday? 🗳️ Some say it would boost voter turnout and align the U.S. with other democracies, while others argue it could create challenges for hourly workers and cost millions. Dive into the debate over whether a federal voting holiday is the best way to strengthen democracy or if there are better solutions. Check out the full breakdown!
Benefits: People get to exercise their constitutional right to participate in democracy without sacrificing their livelihood
Drawbacks: None
Drawbacks: Stockholders don’t like it when the slaves don’t work
Pissing off stockholders is a benefit
I’m all for it as long as bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and shops close down too. Fast food workers and the like shouldn’t have to show up to work when everyone else gets the day off to vote.
This could be easily solved if we simply allowed voting to go on for a week, and mandated that every business must give every employee a day off during that week to go vote. Hell, it could be a month if we wanted. The only reasons to limit voting to a single day are malicious ones.
So many things to fix about our broken democratic institutions. Every state should have mail-in voting as well as early voting. Every state should automate the registration of voters as much as possible as well. And sure, election day should be a federal holiday, or moved to Sunday or Saturday, at least.
Other things to work on: ranked choice voting and getting rid of the nasty racist holdover that is the EC. Also, we need to remove the special privileges that rural land has over people. Way too many ways our current system gives remote areas more representation than they should have…
Good points except for Ranked Choice. That archaic voting system is a sort of poison pill.
It doesn’t actually solve any of the problems proponents claim it does, and it adds complexity and additional points of failure. It was designed in 1788, but rejected for use in France at the time due to the habit of eliminating the Condorcet winner. (The person who would win in a one on one election vs all other candidates)
The bad idea was then reinvented in the early 1800s as the Single Transferrable Vote, with no fixes for that pesky Condorcet issue.
No, the way to go is either the simplicity of Approval, or the more granular STAR. (STAR is the new hotness, designed this century, with the pitfalls of past systems in mind)
Both systems are completely immune to the Spoiler effect while also allowing, or even encouraging the growth of third parties.
In Germany we always have elections on Sundays so it’s basically a public holiday (unlike in the US where stores are still open). There are enough places to vote (though you’re assigned to the one in your district for statistical reasons) so you rarely have to stand in line. I’ve seen pictures of voting lines in the US and was shocked…
Mail-in votes are available to everyone and it’s being used a lot but for many people going to the voting place in person has more meaning to it. Some even put on a suit, but that could also be because they are on the way to church.
Electronic voting was discussed but the consensus is that it’s not safe enough.
The question if it should be a public holiday in the US is weird to me as it is a very clear YES and also YES people should definitely always get a day off on public holidays wtf
I’ve seen pictures of voting lines in the US and was shocked…
Yeah, but those aren’t ubiquitous.
If you live in a suburb or rural area you can count on a dozen nearby polling stations and a 5 minute in and out.
If you live anywhere that supported the confederacy and might vote blue then you might have to deal with a 4-5 hour wait, coupled with provisional ballots that are not counted, voting roll purges, and other minor issues.
I guess what I’m saying is those crazy lines aren’t too much of an issue so long as you try to vote in a part of the country Hitler himself didn’t write of as an example of genetic enforcement to follow in Mein Kampf.
Thanks for the clarification!
Yes. There are no drawbacks.
OK, so make all voting days a holiday?
It’s almost as if people should be paid enough and have enough PTO to live and enjoy it, as well as vote.
The only reason to not make voting day a holiday is because the very people preferring you not vote are losing profits and power don’t want the people worked the hardest to have a say in changing the system.
Easier solution than trying to have a single day off for everyone:
Since early voting is a thing, all employers should be required to give workers 1 paid flex day during voting season so they can vote.
They can even tie the flex day to evidence that they actually voted, so it truly encourages voting instead of just being an extra day off.
I don’t really think we need to police the extra day off. If someone was unable to vote that day for some reason, they shouldn’t be penalized.
While I agree we should police it, have you ever worked for a big corporation, they are going to police it…
The law can be written to prevent that easily. One flex day off for every employee during the election season is mandatory to give people the opportunity to vote.
That is how every other major holiday is handled. Just because I get a winter holiday break every year doesn’t mean that my employer checks to see if I was Santa eligible before I get the vacation.
The goal isn’t to get people an extra day off, it’s to get them to vote.
When I go to a conference or take paid time for education I’m required to prove what I was doing.
We should also fight to get people more general vacation time, sure. But as far as mandating days off for voting I think it makes sense to make sure that they use that day to vote.
Otherwise we’ll just end up with a lot of cheap weekend cruises popping up to take advantage of all the extra holiday time around elections with no increase in voter turnout.
God forbid Americans get more holiday time, especially considering that the rest of the developed world tends to get a lot more than we do.
God, Americans are so cucked when it comes to employee rights (I’m an American). Oh no, someone might get an extra day off!? Disgusting!
I get your point, and yes people should use the day to vote. But trying to mandate it, or police it in some way to make sure you didn’t accidentally give your employee a day off for “no reason,” is fucking absurd.
I imagine in most cases, it would probably even cost more to monitor, than the amount they lost for not having that employee for one day.
This isn’t about making sure businesses make more money. It’s about incentivizing people to vote.
My business gave extra time off to people who got Covid vaccines because it incentivizes people to do something that’s good for them and for society. For people who were already getting the vaccines it was a bonus day, and it gave the push for people on the fence.
It should be the same with voting. The reality is most people do have the opportunity to vote, but choose not to take the time to do it. An extra holiday won’t change that.
Giving them an extra day off no-strings attached is a good thing. They should get an extra month. But if we are specifically trying to get people to vote, then that particular day off should come with strings just like my vaccine day.
How are you going to have evidence of voting?
Everyone that votes gets some variant of “i voted” sticker already, that changes every where, sooooo…
I think I’ve gotten one of those stickers once in my decades of voting. I never outright ask, and most times they’re out on the table or whatever… But no, they don’t give them out like they’re receipts.
However, giving each person a receipt would probably be pretty trivial…
weird, I’ve gotten one of those stickers every time i’ve voted my entire life. i thought it was just a given.
I’ve only ever gotten a sticker twice…plus you can buy rolls of them online.
Who cares about evidence of voting, you work enough days of the year, just take it for heavens sake. If I add up all days there are federal holidays in my country I get nearly 2 months worth and that is without paid or unpaid leave days you get from the employer
None of which was the point of the question, but thanks for the added perspective.
It’s not about getting the day off: the goal is getting people to vote. Tying an extra day off to actually voting is more likely to get people to the polls
Yes, you give them the day off for election day. They know why they are off. If they’re going to vote, they’re going to vote. Simply giving everyone the day off is “getting people to vote.”
Some sort of monitoring to make sure people are actually voting on the day is an absurd and pointless idea. If we’re going that far, then just do what Australia does and make it compulsory.
As it is, they record who votes. It’s how you can have multiple polling locations avaialbe but can only vote once.
It’s not a huge leap from that to being able to prove to your employer that you voted.
Unless the day off can only be used on voting day I think people will use it for their own purposes.
Trump 2024!
Honey, please go sit back at the children’s table. The adults are trying to converse.
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The Republican Party benefits from low voter turnout, so they’d block this at every opportunity.
they’ve publicly admited they cant win fair elections.
Christmas doesn’t create challenges for hourly workers, and noone that matters cares if it costs companies millions.
Even easier. Make the shit electronic. Stop pussy footin around and make it available on the Internet.
As a programmer I really really don’t think this is an idea we’re capable of implementing in a way that’s safe/secure/etc.
See also: https://xkcd.com/2030/
I know enough about the internet to know that this would end up being a bad idea. Not to say that there isn’t a way to correctly implement it (I honestly don’t know). But even if there is, should we trust them to do it correctly? Our (US) government full of octogenarians?
Why? Everything is on the Internet. You can buy houses and bank on the Internet. There are scams sure. But the physical votes are still tabulated and entered into the fuckin Internet!
The voting machines that those votes are originally entered into are not connected to the Internet, they’re on their own disconnected network, and for very good reason. Software is far from perfect, and putting voting software on the Internet would immediately make it a target from attackers all over the world, and they would absolutely be hacked and manipulated.
Right. And you trust the American government to be transparent with this process? You trust every individual involved in programming this system not to fuck it up in some way, intentionally or not?
There’s just way too much that can go wrong, and more possible attack vectors that could possibly be accounted for. We already have state actors actively attempting (often successfully) to interfere with our elections. What makes you think putting it online wouldn’t make that 1000x worse?
Yes.
Additionally, opponents emphasize that private employers are not required to recognize or give paid time off for federal holidays.
lol “we shouldn’t fix this fucked up thing because this other thing is also fucked up”
that’s a you problem, dog
And the solution is right there in the sentence.
Exactly.
The solution here should be the federal government going, “Ooh! Good catch on that! Here’s a law mandating that private employers give paid holidays for all federal holidays! Thanks for looking out for employees!”
And if not all, at least for the arguably most important day of all in the self declared bastion of democracy.
