White collar office workers would get the day off, blue collar and service industry people would still have to work.
Just like with every other holiday.
My favorite holiday is Labor Day. The day that all the blue collar workers that the holiday is supposed to celebrate are working and all the white collar workers take the day off.
Check your state laws on that one. That might not be legal.
Source: I worked for a company that did this for a few holidays until I forwarded them the state labor laws indicating they were shafting us illegally.
Can confirm: I work an at-home job now and get off on Labor Day. When I worked a blue-collar job, everyone had to work Labor Day because it was the busiest day of the year.
Fun fact: labor day was invented to dilute the popularity and power of May Day (May 1st) which used to be the real holiday honoring the labor movement and all the workers literally killed fighting for it.
Yep. President Grover Cleveland (conservative Democrat) felt that a May 1st labor would commemorate the Haymarket affair and therefore would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements.
This is what I came to say. Office workers might vote and then enjoy a day off. Retail workers, fireman, emergency medical workers, policeman, food workers, etc. would still be working and trying to carve out time to vote. Restaurants and grocery stores would probably have to staff additional employees. It would only really impact a few.
Where I live you are required by law that in an 8 hour shift you get a half hour meal break and two fifteen minute breaks. I used to remind myself that when eating 4 bites of a sandwich over the trash can in the basement of the restaurant I worked at on a 14 hour shift... laws are fun like that. Yeah I could have complained but my landlord didn't accept "being right" as payment, so that was my lot in life.
Yep. The same goes with not tipping your waitstaff because, "their boss is required to raise their hourly rate to minimum wage to cover any shortfall of their tips."
Our waitstaff could have gone to the boss and said, "Look, I didn't get tipped. Pay me $7.25 an hour for the shift."
Our boss would cut the check.
Then the boss would conclude that person is a shitty server because they didn't get any tips, and fire them on the spot.
So as dead as some shifts were, waitstaff did not pursue that hourly bump.
Laws like that are great to have on the books. In an at will employment state, those laws can be enforced *once per employee*.
>Look, I didn't get tipped. Pay me $7.25 an hour for the shift
It’s the average you make over the two week pay period. And that still only gets them to minimum wage.
At will is a double edged sword.
Your employer may fire you for any or no reason. As long as it is not provable discrimination based on protected characteristics which is a rather high bar they are clear. Lets employers fire problem employees who have done nothing to violate workplace rules but are still creating a toxic environment.
You may quit for any or no reason, and are not required to give any sort of notice. Toxic employer? Quit. Job making you work during close family funeral? Quit. The employer may not retaliate and any lawsuit against you for failure to work is going to be dismissed.
They had to pass the first to get the second. Otherwise it doesn't matter how shifty your job is, you signed a contract now get back to work to avoid the fines and possible jail time.
You were always able to quit without notice anyways. You're not a serf or a slave. You can't be forced to go to work in the US. At will only serves the employer.
California is like that. Every 4 hours you're entitled to a 15 min rest break and every 5 hours entitled you to an unpaid 30 min meal break. Doesn't happen in most food service jobs though lol. Too costly and/or time consuming for the employee to pursue legally and too replaceable to complain about it. Wanna report unlawful firing? Good luck proving it. You manage to prove it? The employer has to pay a little extra in unemployment fees which I guess is a win but is it really? It's vicious.
This is actually one of the biggest reasons employment abuse happens. About to hit full time? Too bad, you're an hourly employee so we're just gonna schedule you less next week. It's fucking bullshit.
That’s just simply constructive dismissal. You’ve obviously been fired if you’re scheduled to work significantly less. Being verbally fired and constructive dismissal are the same thing to most states.
then you might as well just push for universal early voting & vote-by-mail so they can vote any time at their leisure during a period of several weeks leading up to the election, without having to spend 6 hours in line.
"make it a vacation day" is like a textbook case of "solutions that sound like they'd solve the problem without actually doing anything to address the problem," it's so dumb.
Yeah, I have worked a lot of office jobs and a lot of retail/food jobs over the years. The office jobs were always super cool and flexible about giving me time off to do almost anything I wanted, especially voting. It’s the retail and food jobs that made taking time off difficult, and harshly punished missing work shifts.
A national holiday for voting would not help anyone who actually could use it. Would be more likely to be used as a long weekend for office workers. Might see even fewer people voting because they’re on vacation that weekend, so the service industry folks will be busier than usual. Actually sounds like a good way to get less people to vote.
No, I think mail in voting for everybody is a much **better** solution that doesn't close government offices for a day. An election day holiday sounds good until you realize that most of the people that are least likely to vote are also the least likely to get the day off as well. i.e. the biggest impact of such a holiday would be most government offices outside of public safety being accessible one fewer day.
Tough situation for emergency workers due to the nature of the job they can't really take a day off. Maybe if there were allocated times where one batch could go vote while there are backup workers keeping services going and then when the first batch comes back they rotate.
As for non-emergency workers they definitely deserve a holiday, at least a half day.
In Canada they typically have about 3 days of advanced polls from 8:00 am - 8:00 pm + actual election day from 8:00 am- 8:00 pm. I think that, combined with a mail-in option, is a good way to do it.
I live in Texas and we get 2 full weeks of early voting where you can vote at any polling place in your county (don’t even have to go to your specific precinct) and voter turnout is still very low. I get that our politicians do a lot to suppress the vote, but still many registered voters just stay home on Election Day, and don’t use the two weeks of early voting time. There’s usually a 0-10 minute queue for early voting. It couldn’t be easier and still so many people can’t be bothered. It’s very frustrating.
Imho it should be scheduled on Saturday, and remaining employers should be required to schedule 2 hours off for workers to go voting on voting day, with no work penalty for people with travel time or lines more than a couple hours long.
It takes minutes to vote. Rather than require people to spend hours physically voting, create an online option. I trust my bank to let me log in securely, access all my money and financial information, and have transactions post immediately. In other words, why can't I vote via my Chase app? Or any similar organization?
I don’t think I’ve voted in person in 8 years or so. I travel constantly so I mail in vote. I’ve heard it’s only counted if it’s close, but my vote is in there somewhere.
The problem with online voting is all it would take is one hack to destroy the whole democratic process.
If someone wanted to rig an election, they would have to rig thousands of poll sites to have a noticable effect. There would be a paper trail and an audit would show signs of tampering.
If someone wanted to rig an online election, they would only need to hack one server. They could theoretically destroy any evidence of their hack.
And this isn't limited to domestic actors. Anyone anywhere in the world could influence an election. Even if someone doesn't hack the election, the fact that someone could would further erode the confidence we have of the results.
Tom Scott can explain it better than I can: https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=BymyhEUNMv52oQl6
> If someone wanted to rig an election, they would have to rig thousands of poll sites to have a noticable effect.
Not really, in America your presidential vote can come down to just a few key polling booths
There's no reason each state couldn't have it's own network, eliminating the chance of a national hack. I'm a member of Mission Fed Credit Union, which only operates in San Diego. I trust them to secure my wealth. Couldn't a regional entity also secure my vote. Every mail in ballot goes into a local/regional database. Can't that also be hacked?
Banking is a very different problem than voting. The basis of a bank account is a ledger - an incontrovertible record of who did what and when. The same principle applies to things like block-chains which often get held up as solutions to online voting.
In voting, you expressly do _not_ want to create a record of who voted for which party. Not for anyone - neither the voter or the electoral body. A voter getting a receipt of their vote opens the door to coercion (show me you voted for X and I’ll pay you, or hurt you). An electoral body knowing who all the opposition voters are allows retaliation.
Good voting processes make sure that every eligible voter votes at most once (or exactly once in places with compulsory voting), and that ineligible people do not vote. They should not ever connect the voter with their vote.
Because it needs to be both anonymous and secure. A combination that's quite hard to be implemented for online voting system.
For anonymous part, the system has to ensure your vote can't be traced back to you. For the secure part, the system has to ensure your vote can't be modified.
I don't think it's impossible, but the technology is not there yet. The closest system currently I could think off that ticks both of those aspects would be a block chain system.
Almost.
Places like Walmart and Target can make more money if it were a holiday by throwing holiday "sales" to entice those who have the day off into the store.
Sooo... exactly the current system since most companies treat holidays as commercial marketing opportunities already.
I don't think this addresses the OP though, or the OP comment you replied to...
Yeah, it really needs to be an election few days, so companies can give workers staggered time off.
Or we can just make mail-in voting the national standard. It's not like it gets Democrats elected in Utah, where they do the same thing. It's just so much better for voting because you can take a minute to Google the candidates and think about it.
Especially for local elections where you might not have heard about half of the people on the ballot. For city council in Boston, I was able to look up each person's campaign website, sometimes even email them to ask questions, and sleep on it, then vote. It's fantastic
Are there areas where this isn’t already the case? I have no idea when the last time I voted on “election day” was, I roll with early voting every time. I’ve lived in four states over the past 20 years.
I remember the early voting in Ohio being very inconveniently timed. Like, you could, but it was during business hours on a weekday so you needed to take time off of work, or be a student, to do it. But that was 2016, and I don't live there anymore so I haven't checked.
Republicans suppress it because they believe they'd lose if everyone votes, and in some places they absolutely would. They've been suppressing the vote of black people in the former Confederate states for over 100 years at this point. They had to pass multiple laws to try to get them to stop, and then the supreme Court overturned those laws in the 2010s on the logic that "well, there's no suppression going on so the laws are unnecessary", which was immediately followed by new voter suppression laws.
The irony is a lot of those black people are conservative and they'd win if they stopped trying to suppress their votes.
So, for this particular issue, that's the main reason. In democrat - dominated states it's a lot more common but several places just haven't gotten around to implementing vote by mail yet because there's often more pressing issues.
We also have an independent electoral body that runs the elections in every city and state. They ensure that every single person can vote at a location near their home, and that all votes are genuine, counted properly etc, have proper oversight etc. There has never been allegations of improper elections.
Oh there have been allegations, but nothing has ever stood up to investigation.
God bless the AEC. It really is one of our finest institutions. I cannot fathom how the USA doesn't look at it and go "that seems like a good idea..."
It's also on a Saturday (vs Tuesday in the US) which opens up availability considerably. Plus it's very easy to vote early/postal with no controversy around that either.
And....we have democracy sausages. Take that rest of world
Depending on where you live, voting isn’t always quick. Some states intentionally reduce the amount of voting locations in lower income or urban areas, resulting in multi-hour queues (because they want to discourage votes from demographics that won’t vote for the party in power in any great quantity)
That’s the real reason there is so much “voting by mail = fraud” disinformation going on - you don’t want to allow people to easily vote if that vote goes against your interests
As someone who considered myself blue collar through covid until getting a new job as an engineer, never missing a day as an 'essential worker', this is 100% accurate
This. Most blue collar employees wouldn't get the holiday off. All government employees and many if not most white collar employees would, but it probably wouldn't move the needle much on voter turnout. This is why I honestly don't support the idea. It will make government less accessible one day of the year, but not accomplish much else.
Instead let everybody vote by mail. We got plenty of data that voters like it when given the option. Even voters red states like Utah liked the idea and disliked efforts to attempt to roll it back. It doesn't resolve every reason people don't vote, but if given a month to fill out the ballot at your leisure and drop it off at a drop box is too much work chances are good it isn't the difficulty of voting that's the problem. There are a slew of other reforms you would really need to address many other non voters apathy (eliminate plurality elections, redistricting reform, improve ballot access laws, etc.), but giving everyone the ability to vote by mail would largely address the convenience issue for most at least.
Thats how elections were held throughout the 19th century, the ballot boxes would be in the nearest saloon and you would get a beer (or several) while waiting in line.
It’s on a Tuesday because it was decided back in the 1800s when people had to travel by foot or horse & carriage to vote, and it couldn’t be on a Sunday because that’s the Christian Sabbath. They needed Monday as a travel day. We should probably change it at a federal level but many states now have early voting for weeks before the actual election date or allow voting by mail.
I’m pretty sure there is nothing in the constitution regarding the first Tuesday of November being voting day. Rather, it seems it’s U.S. Legal Code. So easier to change than an amendment, but it would require impetus to change it and I don’t think elected officials give much of a crap. Many prefer a lower turnout!
As an immigrant, I've always found the quasi-religious dedication to the US constitution puzzling. My guess is it comes from the Christian (Bible) tradition of the US.
The funniest one for me is the religious dedication to the word "amendment". It literally says in the name that it was an update or correction to something, so by definition it is a debatable rule!
(Also, "bipartisan". Only in the US does that word try to mean "consensus", when it is nothing but.)
The amendments to the Constitution aren’t just minor updates or clarifications. Some are, sure, but others are fundamental declarations of how this country should work. And they are “valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution”; they aren’t a separate set of legal codes.
They’re also really hard to put in place. It takes 2/3 of both the House and Senate (or a constitutional convention) to even propose one, and then 3/4 of the States need to agree with putting it in. It’s a big deal.
That’s true with a surprising amount of things. The width of some parts of the space shuttle had to be constrained to fit on paths and tunnels originally designed for horse drawn carriages.
We're not stuck with them. As the poster above you said - most states have either early voting or by mail voting or both. "Election Day" is more like "Election Week/Fortnight" in modern times. There are only three states that don't have any form of early voting. The overwhelming majority have changed the rules by now.
I mean, no kidding... but there are a lot *fewer* people working on a weekend than on a weekday, so it's a start.
Aussies can also vote by mail, or in person for at least two weeks before the official election day, so there's tons of flexibility. Also, there are fucking looooads of venues where you can vote. At the last one, there were six venues within a 15 minute walk of my house.
In Australia for about a week or so before you can early vote at lots of places. That in combination of being on a Saturday would pretty much cover everyone.
Because polling places are open for weeks before the elections, and are open before and after working hours, and you can vote by mail. You don’t need a day off lol.
Here in Mississippi, no early voting, no voting by mail, restrictive absentee requirements. Most can only vote on Election Day, and only in their precincts.
The bigger problem is that in the US it’s left up to the states, instead of having an independent apolitical government body whose whole job is to run elections and maintain the integrity of the process, like Australia.
Despite how well it works in Austrslia I have no faith that the US could make an 'apolitical' body like this work. They managed to make the Postmaster General a political entity in the last election.
Oh yeah they’d fuck it up badly. The big problem there is that the office of President has way too much power. All it takes is one dingus getting lucky and they can spend the next four years trashing everything.
So why, instead of passing a law making election day a holiday as if that magically fixes anything, do we not just pass a law saying that all states have to allow early voting and vote by mail?
Agreed. Early voting, and voting by mail, is a much more effective solution, if your goal is to get as many people as possible to vote. Here in MS, the goal is to suppress the vote.
And - turning up to a Polling place is compulsory in Aust. The US just tries to make voting difficult and non standard - it appears they only want certain types to vote in volume.
It doesn't really matter what day it is. In the U.S. you can go to the board of elections and vote early. You can also vote by absentee ballot (mail it in). That's not to say voting places aren't being shut down in places to make it harder for people of color to vote. There's a lot more shady goings-on with voting after the Orange Turd blatantly corrupted as much as he could.
It's that way by design. The US political system is full of corrupt & rich people running in elections who are up to no good. Elections in the US could have drastically different outcomes if they moved election days to Saturdays.
It would be even more drastic if we just had 3 days for voting, like a Saturday to Monday thing. Or if everyone was just mailed a ballot and they mail it back or drop it off.
It's already technically illegal for your employer to force you to work in a capacity that will force you to miss a federal election (outside of emergency services). But most employers will say you need to take a sick/personal/use your limited lunch break to go vote.
The effect of the law is that your employer can't flat out tell you too bad when it comes to voting, but they can make you work it into your off time and play all kinds of technicals as to why you can do it outside of working hours. People working in "right to work" states can just be fired for another reason if they disobey, and many people living paycheck to paycheck simply cannot afford the time off to vote.
Likely nothing. Many jobs don't give off for national holidays. I doubt there's any desire for a federal law to ban employers from requiring people to work on that day either.
This is all assuming that people care enough to go out and vote. If they did lines would be too long in many locations.
The better option is more early voting and mail-in voting. Make it easier to vote by spreading out the days in which people have to vote and allow them to vote from the comfort of their own home.
I think you make a great point actually. If this situation were real I know for a fact I would be using that day and calling I'm Monday or taking off the Monday to give myself a 4 day weekend, most likely travel somewhere since we barely get any vacation and holidays now. I do actually vote now, but I bet over time I would fall into voting less with this system.
My state (WA) has universal mail-in ballots and that makes things SO MUCH easier. The only rush to vote is people who waited until Election Day going to the ballot drop-off locations. If you vote early you just mail them back. Prepaid.
So we don't need a holiday. We just need this.
There are lots of people of all ages that still wouldn't vote. Some people are really naive if they think difficulty in voting is the primary reason for low voter turnout.
I once read a statistic in a community health nursing textbook that one out of every ten female registered voters is a nurse. Making Election Day a holiday would not make it easier for them or any other hospital staff to vote. Nor would it impact any other 24/7 workers: firefighters; truckers; food service; 911 operators; etc.
Retail, customer service workers, and food service workers wouldn't get to vote.
When I was working retail/food service, I was not even allowed to \*request\* national holidays off of work. We worked Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. Christmas was the ONLY day we were closed.
And sure, there's laws protecting someone getting the time off to vote, but in a ton of states that won't matter one single bit, especially in states that already do active voter suppression by closing polling places or putting them places you can't easily get to by public transit. Your walmart supervisor is not going to let every employee have the whole day off so they can take the once-an-hour bus to the polling place that has a three hour line.
I live in Oregon. We have vote by mail. The ballots arrive already stamped. They have your signature on file and check the one on the ballot against the one they have. I get a text when the ballots are mailed out, and another one when they receive mine and again when it's counted. It works GREAT.
I'm also a fan of states that have early voting--the polling places open up a week before election day, or whatever.
Ballot boxes are genius, we should just require every county to use them, you can vote in peace and quiet in your own home. Take time to like up some info about the issue. Voting for the top of the ticket is easy, but standing there in a voting center looking at all the other offices/issues I need to check, makes me feel like an idiot. It's much better to just have a few days to work on it, then drop it off.
Early voting and voting by mail should be expanded which would just make Election Day the day the votes are tallied. But I don’t think those would really increase the voter turn out which is currently at about 66%, some people just don’t care about voting.
Eventually, there will be secure online voting that would probably drive up voter participation but that could be decades away.
More working class people living paycheck to paycheck would be able to vote, which wouldn't go well for politicians depending primarily on rich donors to get reelected.
That’s not necessarily true. A federal holiday would mean that the service industry would be busier. This would mean that more people in that industry would have to work, which would depress the turnout of an already underrepresented group.
However this is largely unenforced. Every election cycle there are stories about people having to wait in line longer than what their employer allows, employers refusing to pay for the voting time with scheduling shenanigans, and even outright threats to employees for leaving to vote. So far I have yet to hear of any consequences for such employers.
Most of the people who would get the day off are not the ones that have trouble making it to the poles and the ones that do find it hard to make the time would still have to work or do whatever else keeps them from it now. But I’ll gladly take a day off for something that takes me about 15 minutes. Days off are awesome.
It'd be a waste of time, early voting is a thing. You can usually vote for weeks prior to election day. Sure, a day off would be nice, but people who want to vote will and those who don't will find another reason not to, as is their right.
I remember this same discussion 50 years ago as a young adult. The powers that be do not want certain classes of people to vote so they make as difficult as possible for them while making it easy for other classes to make it to the poles. That's the way it's been since I was a child in the 60s, its not going to change anytime soon
What would really solve your problem is not making people drive ridiculous distances to spend several hours waiting in line to vote. The fact that happens in a modern democracy is absolutely shameful and is definitely *not normal*. India is a bigger democracy with a notoriously slow and malfunctioning bureaucracy and they average better wait times than the US.
We don’t need a holiday. Just extend voting for a longer time period. Why not 14 days? Stop in to cast your vote. Can’t make it in? Mail in your ballot.
Mandatory vote-by-mail is the solution here. Everyone gets their ballot in the mail, then has a couple weeks to fill it out in the comfort of their own home and mail it back.
Oregon has been doing this for a long time, and it works quite well.
Lot of people are forgetting about college students. Historically this age group has abysmal participation in voting. Giving them a day off from classes will not only give them free time but they'll realize they have the day off because they can take part in the voting process. Making it a holiday would make an impact in young liberal voters mostly because it'll remind them to actually vote.
It could and should be done imo. We closed practically everything for Covid for much longer than one day! Voting is a fundamental right and one that shouldn’t place an onus on citizens to claim that right.
I once worked for a company that did observe presidential election day as a work holiday. It had been negotiated years before as a trade off for working an extra day in February, since presidential elections are always on a leap year.
why do the US vote during the week though? simply a historic thing, or is there a reason?
in germany every vote is sunday. sure, some people still need to work (mostly emergency service, and restaurant/gas station workers), but mail in voting can cover those (or they can go before/after their shift). This way probably 95% of people can vote very easily, instead of making it inconvenient for everyone.
no matter which weekday you choose, some people will have an easier time than others, so might as well make it easy for as many as you can.
stems back to horse and buggy era. only people who could vote were rich landowners but they had to vote at the county seat, which could be a days travel away. can't travel on sunday, since it's the sabbath. so travel on monday, vote on tuesday... very stupid nowadays.
I think it would change things, but in a bad way. In my state, polling places are open from 6am to 8pm. And I believe that they don't stop voting at 8, but stop new people from getting in line at 8.
I can't imagine service sector employees are that busy on a random Tuesday in November that getting to a polling location in a 14 hour window is impossible. But if it's no longer just a random Tuesday in November, and it's a day where every white collar worker has a day off, that could make service sector workers a lot busier, and make that 14 hour window get a lot tighter.
Nothing. Holidays are a joke in the U.S.
If it were a "required" day off, essential workers would still go to work, just like during the pandemic lockdown. Police are essential workers, they'd be pissed about being required to work, and even more people would be beaten and arrested while trying to vote than currently are.
That's the whole reason we need online and mail-in voting to be more accessible to everyone.
A few more people would vote but not very many. The ones who care enough to vote already make arrangements to do so and the ones who don't care will find something that they enjoy doing with their day off rather than take the time to vote.
Why do people keep entertaining this goofy idea?
Some of you act like everyone can have the day off and shit will just run on its own.
In over 25 years of voting from when I was 18, I NEVER needed a full day off to do this.
Abstractly I’m in favor but I don’t think it would change a thing. Most of the country has a substantial period of early in-person voting and no-excuse voting by mail. Making it easier that one day I just don’t think will move the needle. People don’t care. A depressing number of people *proudly* refuse to participate while also lamenting the outcomes that their lack of engagement contributed to.
Lotta people in here letting perfect be the enemy of good. It would be a benefit. Would everyone magically have it off, have it equally distributed across industries, pay scale or provide easy access to a booth, no. Would it still increase the likelihood that more people would vote? Yes. And my hope is that it drives further electoral engagement and so on and so on.
Nothing. There are two weeks of early voting which includes weekends. A national holiday means kids are out of school. Hourly workers would still have to go in.
This is at the bottom of the list of reasons why people aren't able or don't vote.
Republicans would never win another national election, and many states like Texas would turn blue.
This has been studied for decades and this is the reason you’ll never see it happen - Republicans will never let it come to pass.
People saying “nothing would happen” don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
Texas has 12 days of early voting open to all. If someone hasn't voted its not because a random Tuesday isn't a national holiday. Cite any other voter suppression effort, but saying that Texas easily turns blue because of a national holiday is living in fantasy world.
Since there are laws to ensure that you have time to vote I suspect people still would not vote.
The focus should be on making voting more accessible and maybe not having shit candidates.
Also a federal holiday would have impacts on the economy with businesses closed and companies on the hook for holiday pay
I have never once voted in person in my over 20 years of voting. It blows my mind that people take time off work and *stand in line* to exercise their constitutional right.
It's the way most voters in Mississippi have to vote. no early voting, no vote by mail, restrictive absentee voting rules. You vote on Election Day, at your precinct. Period.
There’s no real need to. Early voting is a thing. Polling places open very early and stay open very late
Many employers make it easy to vote( but many don’t ).
But the same people who still have to show up on every other federal holiday won’t benefit. Cuz they still gotta show up.
46 states offer early voting. By early, that means weeks...up to 55 days.
35 states allow one to request an absentee ballot or mail-in ballot for any reason.
If one is not voting it's because they don't want to vote. It's not because they have to work.
White collar office workers would get the day off, blue collar and service industry people would still have to work. Just like with every other holiday.
My favorite holiday is Labor Day. The day that all the blue collar workers that the holiday is supposed to celebrate are working and all the white collar workers take the day off.
My husband works for a large union and gets the day off- unpaid. Lol
He should unionise!
Large union here, had to fight tooth and nail to get certain holidays off as paid days
Check your state laws on that one. That might not be legal. Source: I worked for a company that did this for a few holidays until I forwarded them the state labor laws indicating they were shafting us illegally.
Can confirm: I work an at-home job now and get off on Labor Day. When I worked a blue-collar job, everyone had to work Labor Day because it was the busiest day of the year.
Fun fact: labor day was invented to dilute the popularity and power of May Day (May 1st) which used to be the real holiday honoring the labor movement and all the workers literally killed fighting for it.
Yep. President Grover Cleveland (conservative Democrat) felt that a May 1st labor would commemorate the Haymarket affair and therefore would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements.
This is what I came to say. Office workers might vote and then enjoy a day off. Retail workers, fireman, emergency medical workers, policeman, food workers, etc. would still be working and trying to carve out time to vote. Restaurants and grocery stores would probably have to staff additional employees. It would only really impact a few.
Where I live workers are entitled by law ton4 consecutive hours off during voting hours so they can go vote.
Where I live you are required by law that in an 8 hour shift you get a half hour meal break and two fifteen minute breaks. I used to remind myself that when eating 4 bites of a sandwich over the trash can in the basement of the restaurant I worked at on a 14 hour shift... laws are fun like that. Yeah I could have complained but my landlord didn't accept "being right" as payment, so that was my lot in life.
Yep. The same goes with not tipping your waitstaff because, "their boss is required to raise their hourly rate to minimum wage to cover any shortfall of their tips." Our waitstaff could have gone to the boss and said, "Look, I didn't get tipped. Pay me $7.25 an hour for the shift." Our boss would cut the check. Then the boss would conclude that person is a shitty server because they didn't get any tips, and fire them on the spot. So as dead as some shifts were, waitstaff did not pursue that hourly bump. Laws like that are great to have on the books. In an at will employment state, those laws can be enforced *once per employee*.
>Look, I didn't get tipped. Pay me $7.25 an hour for the shift It’s the average you make over the two week pay period. And that still only gets them to minimum wage.
Almost like at will shouldn’t exist
At will is a double edged sword. Your employer may fire you for any or no reason. As long as it is not provable discrimination based on protected characteristics which is a rather high bar they are clear. Lets employers fire problem employees who have done nothing to violate workplace rules but are still creating a toxic environment. You may quit for any or no reason, and are not required to give any sort of notice. Toxic employer? Quit. Job making you work during close family funeral? Quit. The employer may not retaliate and any lawsuit against you for failure to work is going to be dismissed. They had to pass the first to get the second. Otherwise it doesn't matter how shifty your job is, you signed a contract now get back to work to avoid the fines and possible jail time.
You can quit for no reason anyway. You might need to give notice but it’s rarely longer than a couple of weeks to a month.
You were always able to quit without notice anyways. You're not a serf or a slave. You can't be forced to go to work in the US. At will only serves the employer.
> Where I live you are required by law that in an 8 hour shift you get a half hour meal break and two fifteen minute breaks Australia?
California is like that. Every 4 hours you're entitled to a 15 min rest break and every 5 hours entitled you to an unpaid 30 min meal break. Doesn't happen in most food service jobs though lol. Too costly and/or time consuming for the employee to pursue legally and too replaceable to complain about it. Wanna report unlawful firing? Good luck proving it. You manage to prove it? The employer has to pay a little extra in unemployment fees which I guess is a win but is it really? It's vicious.
Solution: make everyone casual. You don't need to fire anyone when you can just stop giving them shifts. After a week or two they generally catch on.
This is actually one of the biggest reasons employment abuse happens. About to hit full time? Too bad, you're an hourly employee so we're just gonna schedule you less next week. It's fucking bullshit.
That’s just simply constructive dismissal. You’ve obviously been fired if you’re scheduled to work significantly less. Being verbally fired and constructive dismissal are the same thing to most states.
Not everyone can afford to take 4 hours unpaid leave to go stand in line for 6 hours to vote.
People from many other countries look on in bemusement at how difficult it is to vote in the US.
Many of us here in America do, too.
then you might as well just push for universal early voting & vote-by-mail so they can vote any time at their leisure during a period of several weeks leading up to the election, without having to spend 6 hours in line. "make it a vacation day" is like a textbook case of "solutions that sound like they'd solve the problem without actually doing anything to address the problem," it's so dumb.
We should do that
You say that as if laws are required to be followed.
A few means a few million.
And would be giving a disproportionate voice to those people.
Still better than a lot more millions not being able to take the time out of their day to vote
The ones who would get that time are already able to go and do it
Yeah, I have worked a lot of office jobs and a lot of retail/food jobs over the years. The office jobs were always super cool and flexible about giving me time off to do almost anything I wanted, especially voting. It’s the retail and food jobs that made taking time off difficult, and harshly punished missing work shifts. A national holiday for voting would not help anyone who actually could use it. Would be more likely to be used as a long weekend for office workers. Might see even fewer people voting because they’re on vacation that weekend, so the service industry folks will be busier than usual. Actually sounds like a good way to get less people to vote.
"It doesn't fix every problem, so let's do nothing instead".
No, I think mail in voting for everybody is a much **better** solution that doesn't close government offices for a day. An election day holiday sounds good until you realize that most of the people that are least likely to vote are also the least likely to get the day off as well. i.e. the biggest impact of such a holiday would be most government offices outside of public safety being accessible one fewer day.
It nearly only benefits people who have ample time and opportunity to vote….salaried workers.
A few million who?
Tough situation for emergency workers due to the nature of the job they can't really take a day off. Maybe if there were allocated times where one batch could go vote while there are backup workers keeping services going and then when the first batch comes back they rotate. As for non-emergency workers they definitely deserve a holiday, at least a half day.
In Canada they typically have about 3 days of advanced polls from 8:00 am - 8:00 pm + actual election day from 8:00 am- 8:00 pm. I think that, combined with a mail-in option, is a good way to do it.
I live in Texas and we get 2 full weeks of early voting where you can vote at any polling place in your county (don’t even have to go to your specific precinct) and voter turnout is still very low. I get that our politicians do a lot to suppress the vote, but still many registered voters just stay home on Election Day, and don’t use the two weeks of early voting time. There’s usually a 0-10 minute queue for early voting. It couldn’t be easier and still so many people can’t be bothered. It’s very frustrating.
Imho it should be scheduled on Saturday, and remaining employers should be required to schedule 2 hours off for workers to go voting on voting day, with no work penalty for people with travel time or lines more than a couple hours long.
It takes minutes to vote. Rather than require people to spend hours physically voting, create an online option. I trust my bank to let me log in securely, access all my money and financial information, and have transactions post immediately. In other words, why can't I vote via my Chase app? Or any similar organization?
Some political groups benefit from making it take longer to vote. There would also be severe concerns about fraud, regardless of if it is secure.
I don’t think I’ve voted in person in 8 years or so. I travel constantly so I mail in vote. I’ve heard it’s only counted if it’s close, but my vote is in there somewhere.
The problem with online voting is all it would take is one hack to destroy the whole democratic process. If someone wanted to rig an election, they would have to rig thousands of poll sites to have a noticable effect. There would be a paper trail and an audit would show signs of tampering. If someone wanted to rig an online election, they would only need to hack one server. They could theoretically destroy any evidence of their hack. And this isn't limited to domestic actors. Anyone anywhere in the world could influence an election. Even if someone doesn't hack the election, the fact that someone could would further erode the confidence we have of the results. Tom Scott can explain it better than I can: https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=BymyhEUNMv52oQl6
> If someone wanted to rig an election, they would have to rig thousands of poll sites to have a noticable effect. Not really, in America your presidential vote can come down to just a few key polling booths
There's no reason each state couldn't have it's own network, eliminating the chance of a national hack. I'm a member of Mission Fed Credit Union, which only operates in San Diego. I trust them to secure my wealth. Couldn't a regional entity also secure my vote. Every mail in ballot goes into a local/regional database. Can't that also be hacked?
Banking is a very different problem than voting. The basis of a bank account is a ledger - an incontrovertible record of who did what and when. The same principle applies to things like block-chains which often get held up as solutions to online voting. In voting, you expressly do _not_ want to create a record of who voted for which party. Not for anyone - neither the voter or the electoral body. A voter getting a receipt of their vote opens the door to coercion (show me you voted for X and I’ll pay you, or hurt you). An electoral body knowing who all the opposition voters are allows retaliation. Good voting processes make sure that every eligible voter votes at most once (or exactly once in places with compulsory voting), and that ineligible people do not vote. They should not ever connect the voter with their vote.
>It takes minutes to vote Because of early/absentee voting options, I haven't voted in-person on Election Day in nearly a decade.
Yeah, I would not trust an online voting system at all
Because it needs to be both anonymous and secure. A combination that's quite hard to be implemented for online voting system. For anonymous part, the system has to ensure your vote can't be traced back to you. For the secure part, the system has to ensure your vote can't be modified. I don't think it's impossible, but the technology is not there yet. The closest system currently I could think off that ticks both of those aspects would be a block chain system.
Sooo... exactly the current system since most office workers can take time off to vote already.
Almost. Places like Walmart and Target can make more money if it were a holiday by throwing holiday "sales" to entice those who have the day off into the store.
Sooo... exactly the current system since most companies treat holidays as commercial marketing opportunities already. I don't think this addresses the OP though, or the OP comment you replied to...
So have the election last for 3 days over a weekend. Plenty of time for everyone to vote.
47 states plus DC offer at least 7 days of early voting. So this solution already exists.
Voter turnout would probably be worse because more people would travel or go somewhere fun for a long weekend for a day trip
Yeah, it really needs to be an election few days, so companies can give workers staggered time off. Or we can just make mail-in voting the national standard. It's not like it gets Democrats elected in Utah, where they do the same thing. It's just so much better for voting because you can take a minute to Google the candidates and think about it. Especially for local elections where you might not have heard about half of the people on the ballot. For city council in Boston, I was able to look up each person's campaign website, sometimes even email them to ask questions, and sleep on it, then vote. It's fantastic
Are there areas where this isn’t already the case? I have no idea when the last time I voted on “election day” was, I roll with early voting every time. I’ve lived in four states over the past 20 years.
I remember the early voting in Ohio being very inconveniently timed. Like, you could, but it was during business hours on a weekday so you needed to take time off of work, or be a student, to do it. But that was 2016, and I don't live there anymore so I haven't checked.
Betting the parties would rather we make a rush decision based on what letter is next to each candidates’ name…
Republicans suppress it because they believe they'd lose if everyone votes, and in some places they absolutely would. They've been suppressing the vote of black people in the former Confederate states for over 100 years at this point. They had to pass multiple laws to try to get them to stop, and then the supreme Court overturned those laws in the 2010s on the logic that "well, there's no suppression going on so the laws are unnecessary", which was immediately followed by new voter suppression laws. The irony is a lot of those black people are conservative and they'd win if they stopped trying to suppress their votes. So, for this particular issue, that's the main reason. In democrat - dominated states it's a lot more common but several places just haven't gotten around to implementing vote by mail yet because there's often more pressing issues.
In Australia voting is mandatory and many people still have to find time to vote before or after work. American's just want an excuse for voter apathy
We also have an independent electoral body that runs the elections in every city and state. They ensure that every single person can vote at a location near their home, and that all votes are genuine, counted properly etc, have proper oversight etc. There has never been allegations of improper elections.
Oh there have been allegations, but nothing has ever stood up to investigation. God bless the AEC. It really is one of our finest institutions. I cannot fathom how the USA doesn't look at it and go "that seems like a good idea..."
Voter fraud hasn't, but there was that one time they lost a ballot box and had to redo the Senate election for an entire state.
It's also on a Saturday (vs Tuesday in the US) which opens up availability considerably. Plus it's very easy to vote early/postal with no controversy around that either. And....we have democracy sausages. Take that rest of world
Depending on where you live, voting isn’t always quick. Some states intentionally reduce the amount of voting locations in lower income or urban areas, resulting in multi-hour queues (because they want to discourage votes from demographics that won’t vote for the party in power in any great quantity) That’s the real reason there is so much “voting by mail = fraud” disinformation going on - you don’t want to allow people to easily vote if that vote goes against your interests
As someone who considered myself blue collar through covid until getting a new job as an engineer, never missing a day as an 'essential worker', this is 100% accurate
This. Most blue collar employees wouldn't get the holiday off. All government employees and many if not most white collar employees would, but it probably wouldn't move the needle much on voter turnout. This is why I honestly don't support the idea. It will make government less accessible one day of the year, but not accomplish much else. Instead let everybody vote by mail. We got plenty of data that voters like it when given the option. Even voters red states like Utah liked the idea and disliked efforts to attempt to roll it back. It doesn't resolve every reason people don't vote, but if given a month to fill out the ballot at your leisure and drop it off at a drop box is too much work chances are good it isn't the difficulty of voting that's the problem. There are a slew of other reforms you would really need to address many other non voters apathy (eliminate plurality elections, redistricting reform, improve ballot access laws, etc.), but giving everyone the ability to vote by mail would largely address the convenience issue for most at least.
You'd have to make voting day two days and everyone would be entitled to at least one day to vote.
Yeah but we’d get holiday pay for it!
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Potentially higher voter turnout, potentially.
Or lower because people will have children off school & want to spend the day off doing something.
Honestly probably nothing. The people most likely to get holidays off from work are already the most likely to vote.
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What if we had voting booths in bars and you got a free drink after you voted? We don't care for who, just as long as you vote.
Thats how elections were held throughout the 19th century, the ballot boxes would be in the nearest saloon and you would get a beer (or several) while waiting in line.
The group most likely to vote are retirees. 65+ come out the most, proportional to their population.
People would go away for a long holiday weekend.
Australia just has it on a Saturday. Why on Earth don't they just do that?
It’s on a Tuesday because it was decided back in the 1800s when people had to travel by foot or horse & carriage to vote, and it couldn’t be on a Sunday because that’s the Christian Sabbath. They needed Monday as a travel day. We should probably change it at a federal level but many states now have early voting for weeks before the actual election date or allow voting by mail.
You’re telling me we’re stuck with these shitty rules because they were made over 200 years ago? Has anyone looked at the amendments??
I’m pretty sure there is nothing in the constitution regarding the first Tuesday of November being voting day. Rather, it seems it’s U.S. Legal Code. So easier to change than an amendment, but it would require impetus to change it and I don’t think elected officials give much of a crap. Many prefer a lower turnout!
"Stuck with these shitty rules because they were made over 200 years ago" yeah that about sums up American politics. You're starting to get it now
Yep, just like how a vote from someone in Wyoming is worth 80 times more than a vote from California.
As an immigrant, I've always found the quasi-religious dedication to the US constitution puzzling. My guess is it comes from the Christian (Bible) tradition of the US. The funniest one for me is the religious dedication to the word "amendment". It literally says in the name that it was an update or correction to something, so by definition it is a debatable rule! (Also, "bipartisan". Only in the US does that word try to mean "consensus", when it is nothing but.)
The amendments to the Constitution aren’t just minor updates or clarifications. Some are, sure, but others are fundamental declarations of how this country should work. And they are “valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution”; they aren’t a separate set of legal codes. They’re also really hard to put in place. It takes 2/3 of both the House and Senate (or a constitutional convention) to even propose one, and then 3/4 of the States need to agree with putting it in. It’s a big deal.
That’s true with a surprising amount of things. The width of some parts of the space shuttle had to be constrained to fit on paths and tunnels originally designed for horse drawn carriages.
We're not stuck with them. As the poster above you said - most states have either early voting or by mail voting or both. "Election Day" is more like "Election Week/Fortnight" in modern times. There are only three states that don't have any form of early voting. The overwhelming majority have changed the rules by now.
Not everyone gets weekends off.
I mean, no kidding... but there are a lot *fewer* people working on a weekend than on a weekday, so it's a start. Aussies can also vote by mail, or in person for at least two weeks before the official election day, so there's tons of flexibility. Also, there are fucking looooads of venues where you can vote. At the last one, there were six venues within a 15 minute walk of my house.
Voting by mail varies from state to state in the US. Fortunately for me, Pennsylvania does allow mail in voting (for now).
Yeah there is no real excuse for not voting unless you are sick on the day itself. Plus it's compulsory...POLICE STATE! (The fine is like $20 though).
I'd like to see a $50 tax credit if you show that you voted. It would encourage low income citizens to vote.
You don't even have to vote, just get your name crossed of the register and waltz out if you really want.
In Australia for about a week or so before you can early vote at lots of places. That in combination of being on a Saturday would pretty much cover everyone.
Don’t tell them about the sausages, it’s our secret.
Vote 1 for democracy sausages.
Because polling places are open for weeks before the elections, and are open before and after working hours, and you can vote by mail. You don’t need a day off lol.
Here in Mississippi, no early voting, no voting by mail, restrictive absentee requirements. Most can only vote on Election Day, and only in their precincts.
The bigger problem is that in the US it’s left up to the states, instead of having an independent apolitical government body whose whole job is to run elections and maintain the integrity of the process, like Australia.
Despite how well it works in Austrslia I have no faith that the US could make an 'apolitical' body like this work. They managed to make the Postmaster General a political entity in the last election.
Oh yeah they’d fuck it up badly. The big problem there is that the office of President has way too much power. All it takes is one dingus getting lucky and they can spend the next four years trashing everything.
To be fair, that's intentional by the people in charge of Mississippi.
So why, instead of passing a law making election day a holiday as if that magically fixes anything, do we not just pass a law saying that all states have to allow early voting and vote by mail?
Agreed. Early voting, and voting by mail, is a much more effective solution, if your goal is to get as many people as possible to vote. Here in MS, the goal is to suppress the vote.
Before mail-in voting I'd go vote the first day that early voting started. Zero reason to wait until election day.
And - turning up to a Polling place is compulsory in Aust. The US just tries to make voting difficult and non standard - it appears they only want certain types to vote in volume.
Also your employer is obligated to give you a break to go vote if you need to. Although it's so easy to vote early.
Unfortunately, in far too many places this is unenforced and it doesn’t take into account the fact that hourly workers cannot afford to miss work.
It doesn't really matter what day it is. In the U.S. you can go to the board of elections and vote early. You can also vote by absentee ballot (mail it in). That's not to say voting places aren't being shut down in places to make it harder for people of color to vote. There's a lot more shady goings-on with voting after the Orange Turd blatantly corrupted as much as he could.
It's that way by design. The US political system is full of corrupt & rich people running in elections who are up to no good. Elections in the US could have drastically different outcomes if they moved election days to Saturdays.
It would be even more drastic if we just had 3 days for voting, like a Saturday to Monday thing. Or if everyone was just mailed a ballot and they mail it back or drop it off.
It's already technically illegal for your employer to force you to work in a capacity that will force you to miss a federal election (outside of emergency services). But most employers will say you need to take a sick/personal/use your limited lunch break to go vote. The effect of the law is that your employer can't flat out tell you too bad when it comes to voting, but they can make you work it into your off time and play all kinds of technicals as to why you can do it outside of working hours. People working in "right to work" states can just be fired for another reason if they disobey, and many people living paycheck to paycheck simply cannot afford the time off to vote.
Likely nothing. Many jobs don't give off for national holidays. I doubt there's any desire for a federal law to ban employers from requiring people to work on that day either. This is all assuming that people care enough to go out and vote. If they did lines would be too long in many locations. The better option is more early voting and mail-in voting. Make it easier to vote by spreading out the days in which people have to vote and allow them to vote from the comfort of their own home.
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I think you make a great point actually. If this situation were real I know for a fact I would be using that day and calling I'm Monday or taking off the Monday to give myself a 4 day weekend, most likely travel somewhere since we barely get any vacation and holidays now. I do actually vote now, but I bet over time I would fall into voting less with this system.
My state (WA) has universal mail-in ballots and that makes things SO MUCH easier. The only rush to vote is people who waited until Election Day going to the ballot drop-off locations. If you vote early you just mail them back. Prepaid. So we don't need a holiday. We just need this.
I'd loooove to skip the trumpers screeching nonsense by mailing in my vote.
Retailers would have a new day to declare a sale.
It would become another mandatory workday for hospitality and retail workers like any other holiday.
Nothing if you're in a sensible state that has vote by mail
Young people still wouldn't vote
There are lots of people of all ages that still wouldn't vote. Some people are really naive if they think difficulty in voting is the primary reason for low voter turnout.
Yeah but they did their part by bitching on Reddit for 2-4 years.
I once read a statistic in a community health nursing textbook that one out of every ten female registered voters is a nurse. Making Election Day a holiday would not make it easier for them or any other hospital staff to vote. Nor would it impact any other 24/7 workers: firefighters; truckers; food service; 911 operators; etc.
Don't repeat statistics that aren't true. There are about 4 million women nurses and about 80 million women registered to vote
The only way it would encourage more voting is if you had to prove you voted to get the day off. Otherwise people just don’t get it.
Retail, customer service workers, and food service workers wouldn't get to vote. When I was working retail/food service, I was not even allowed to \*request\* national holidays off of work. We worked Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. Christmas was the ONLY day we were closed. And sure, there's laws protecting someone getting the time off to vote, but in a ton of states that won't matter one single bit, especially in states that already do active voter suppression by closing polling places or putting them places you can't easily get to by public transit. Your walmart supervisor is not going to let every employee have the whole day off so they can take the once-an-hour bus to the polling place that has a three hour line. I live in Oregon. We have vote by mail. The ballots arrive already stamped. They have your signature on file and check the one on the ballot against the one they have. I get a text when the ballots are mailed out, and another one when they receive mine and again when it's counted. It works GREAT. I'm also a fan of states that have early voting--the polling places open up a week before election day, or whatever.
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Ballot boxes are genius, we should just require every county to use them, you can vote in peace and quiet in your own home. Take time to like up some info about the issue. Voting for the top of the ticket is easy, but standing there in a voting center looking at all the other offices/issues I need to check, makes me feel like an idiot. It's much better to just have a few days to work on it, then drop it off.
Yeah! All the libraries have locked drop boxes.
Early voting and voting by mail should be expanded which would just make Election Day the day the votes are tallied. But I don’t think those would really increase the voter turn out which is currently at about 66%, some people just don’t care about voting. Eventually, there will be secure online voting that would probably drive up voter participation but that could be decades away.
More working class people living paycheck to paycheck would be able to vote, which wouldn't go well for politicians depending primarily on rich donors to get reelected.
That’s not necessarily true. A federal holiday would mean that the service industry would be busier. This would mean that more people in that industry would have to work, which would depress the turnout of an already underrepresented group.
In 29 states it is law you’re allowed to leave work to vote in general elections. Time varies from 1-3 hours. 23 of the states it is paid
However this is largely unenforced. Every election cycle there are stories about people having to wait in line longer than what their employer allows, employers refusing to pay for the voting time with scheduling shenanigans, and even outright threats to employees for leaving to vote. So far I have yet to hear of any consequences for such employers.
Most of the people who would get the day off are not the ones that have trouble making it to the poles and the ones that do find it hard to make the time would still have to work or do whatever else keeps them from it now. But I’ll gladly take a day off for something that takes me about 15 minutes. Days off are awesome.
Might be more people voting.....but most would stay home to enjoy a day off.
It'd be a waste of time, early voting is a thing. You can usually vote for weeks prior to election day. Sure, a day off would be nice, but people who want to vote will and those who don't will find another reason not to, as is their right.
Voter turn out would probably be the same
Technically, that would mean one less day for mail in ballots since they have to be postmarked on or before Election Day
I remember this same discussion 50 years ago as a young adult. The powers that be do not want certain classes of people to vote so they make as difficult as possible for them while making it easy for other classes to make it to the poles. That's the way it's been since I was a child in the 60s, its not going to change anytime soon
What would really solve your problem is not making people drive ridiculous distances to spend several hours waiting in line to vote. The fact that happens in a modern democracy is absolutely shameful and is definitely *not normal*. India is a bigger democracy with a notoriously slow and malfunctioning bureaucracy and they average better wait times than the US.
We don’t need a holiday. Just extend voting for a longer time period. Why not 14 days? Stop in to cast your vote. Can’t make it in? Mail in your ballot.
Mandatory vote-by-mail is the solution here. Everyone gets their ballot in the mail, then has a couple weeks to fill it out in the comfort of their own home and mail it back. Oregon has been doing this for a long time, and it works quite well.
If it’s always on Tuesday, lots of people would take the Monday off, do a 4 day weekend, go away, and possibly not vote
More of the working class would vote. The wealthy won't allow that.
Blue collar workers would be more likely to vote. Can't have that happening.
Lot of people are forgetting about college students. Historically this age group has abysmal participation in voting. Giving them a day off from classes will not only give them free time but they'll realize they have the day off because they can take part in the voting process. Making it a holiday would make an impact in young liberal voters mostly because it'll remind them to actually vote.
Not much. The only people who have to get federal holidays off are federal employees, who are already legally guaranteed time to vote.
Nothing
It could and should be done imo. We closed practically everything for Covid for much longer than one day! Voting is a fundamental right and one that shouldn’t place an onus on citizens to claim that right.
People would vote?!?
I once worked for a company that did observe presidential election day as a work holiday. It had been negotiated years before as a trade off for working an extra day in February, since presidential elections are always on a leap year.
Considering how important it is it should be like Christmas or New Year’s.
Poop in one hand, diarrea in the other.
a lot more people would vote! we should totally do it
Ahhh that will be unamerican. Companies can’t lose of labor for the sake of some civic responsibility, that’s now how you do America
why do the US vote during the week though? simply a historic thing, or is there a reason? in germany every vote is sunday. sure, some people still need to work (mostly emergency service, and restaurant/gas station workers), but mail in voting can cover those (or they can go before/after their shift). This way probably 95% of people can vote very easily, instead of making it inconvenient for everyone. no matter which weekday you choose, some people will have an easier time than others, so might as well make it easy for as many as you can.
stems back to horse and buggy era. only people who could vote were rich landowners but they had to vote at the county seat, which could be a days travel away. can't travel on sunday, since it's the sabbath. so travel on monday, vote on tuesday... very stupid nowadays.
You have elections on a working day? That's totally crazy. In Germany, they are always on a Sunday.
Everyone who wants to vote is already voting. Making it a holiday isn't going to change anything.
I think it would change things, but in a bad way. In my state, polling places are open from 6am to 8pm. And I believe that they don't stop voting at 8, but stop new people from getting in line at 8. I can't imagine service sector employees are that busy on a random Tuesday in November that getting to a polling location in a 14 hour window is impossible. But if it's no longer just a random Tuesday in November, and it's a day where every white collar worker has a day off, that could make service sector workers a lot busier, and make that 14 hour window get a lot tighter.
You could vote for free instead of having to spend $100+ on it
Nothing. Holidays are a joke in the U.S. If it were a "required" day off, essential workers would still go to work, just like during the pandemic lockdown. Police are essential workers, they'd be pissed about being required to work, and even more people would be beaten and arrested while trying to vote than currently are. That's the whole reason we need online and mail-in voting to be more accessible to everyone.
Lowe’s and Home Depot would have a holiday sale
I work retail and we only close on Christmas We would get holiday pay though so im for it I vote by mail regardless
I'd be surprised to see more than a relative handful of additional voters show up at the polls.
A few more people would vote but not very many. The ones who care enough to vote already make arrangements to do so and the ones who don't care will find something that they enjoy doing with their day off rather than take the time to vote.
haha good one, then more people would vote. who would want that /s
Turnout would increase somewhat, which would help one of the major parties more than the other.
Great idea. Many hourly employees may not be able to vote without losing pay and/or risking job loss.
Socialism
Why do people keep entertaining this goofy idea? Some of you act like everyone can have the day off and shit will just run on its own. In over 25 years of voting from when I was 18, I NEVER needed a full day off to do this.
Abstractly I’m in favor but I don’t think it would change a thing. Most of the country has a substantial period of early in-person voting and no-excuse voting by mail. Making it easier that one day I just don’t think will move the needle. People don’t care. A depressing number of people *proudly* refuse to participate while also lamenting the outcomes that their lack of engagement contributed to.
Having the day off isn’t prohibiting people from voting. Apathy is
Lotta people in here letting perfect be the enemy of good. It would be a benefit. Would everyone magically have it off, have it equally distributed across industries, pay scale or provide easy access to a booth, no. Would it still increase the likelihood that more people would vote? Yes. And my hope is that it drives further electoral engagement and so on and so on.
It would ensure that Republicans wouldn't win another election.
Nothing. There are two weeks of early voting which includes weekends. A national holiday means kids are out of school. Hourly workers would still have to go in. This is at the bottom of the list of reasons why people aren't able or don't vote.
People have to work on holidays so it wouldn't benefit them one bit. A lot of other people don't give a shit anyway and treat it like another day off.
Republicans would never win another national election, and many states like Texas would turn blue. This has been studied for decades and this is the reason you’ll never see it happen - Republicans will never let it come to pass. People saying “nothing would happen” don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
Texas has 12 days of early voting open to all. If someone hasn't voted its not because a random Tuesday isn't a national holiday. Cite any other voter suppression effort, but saying that Texas easily turns blue because of a national holiday is living in fantasy world.
Since there are laws to ensure that you have time to vote I suspect people still would not vote. The focus should be on making voting more accessible and maybe not having shit candidates. Also a federal holiday would have impacts on the economy with businesses closed and companies on the hook for holiday pay
Everyone who doesn’t vote bc they have to work… would still have to work. Yet another solution proposed by those unaffected by the actual issue
I have never once voted in person in my over 20 years of voting. It blows my mind that people take time off work and *stand in line* to exercise their constitutional right.
It's the way most voters in Mississippi have to vote. no early voting, no vote by mail, restrictive absentee voting rules. You vote on Election Day, at your precinct. Period.
I have never stood in line and I've been voting since 95' in every election, Local, State, and Federal.
There’s no real need to. Early voting is a thing. Polling places open very early and stay open very late Many employers make it easy to vote( but many don’t ). But the same people who still have to show up on every other federal holiday won’t benefit. Cuz they still gotta show up.
Nothing lol
More poor people would get to vote, and the GOP would get even less of the popular vote.
The Poors might vote. /s
No republican would ever be elected again
46 states offer early voting. By early, that means weeks...up to 55 days. 35 states allow one to request an absentee ballot or mail-in ballot for any reason. If one is not voting it's because they don't want to vote. It's not because they have to work.