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!
Many argue that advocates should redirect their efforts to create early voting options
Additionally, opponents emphasize that private employers are not required to recognize or give paid time off for federal holidays.
Both arguments against it are whataboutist horseshit. Anyone claiming these as reasons not to also make it a holiday would almost certainly also be against “okay, let’s do all three”, because they are arguing in bad faith.
Can you imagine a world where workers get the day off as a recognized federal holiday but because of early mail in voting they took advantage of they get just a day off during some of the busiest time of the year to get chores and other tasks done and it inspires people to participate more actively and proactively because of the benefits that are overwhelmingly positive?
Its a shame that apparently there might be some lost profits for a day so its apparently impossible, and now we have to make other excuses as if they are legitimate.
If only we could find a way to monotize it and get people buying random low quality junk to trade around so that corps still gets to profit off it.
In France, voting day is always a Sunday. And if you work on a Sunday (most people don’t), your boss has to schedule your working day so that you can go and vote.
Yeah, because in France they’re a hair trigger away from setting shit on fire, like all the time.
If that’s what it takes, I guess
Make voting take a week and limit campaigning to 90 days before the end of that week.
Shithole country. Honestly, together with the issues like voter roll purging and winner takes it all. How can you take this “pro/con” discussion even seriously?
The real question should be why the US is so undemocratic, what the forces are that drive this minority rule and prevent a more free and open society.
In Canada every Canadian is guaranteed four contiguous hours off work on election day while the polls are open to vote.
Yes.
Moving on.
this is the pinnacle of stupid writing. Calling this “Research” is nonsense. You should have the day off if you have an “I voted” sticker. Not only should election day be a day off but so should:
- Primaries
- Special Elections
- Voter Registration deadlines.
Although the federal government cannot require private companies to observe holidays
JFC what a dystopian hellhole. It kills me they are so proud of their shitty living conditions.
Wait really, why coulsnt they force them to?!? In Canada companies that are open pay huge fines. Companies that are deemed essential do not recieve fines but have to pay 2.5 Mult to employees and if the employee does not work they get a days pay.
Money is God in America.
Okay, let’s give everybody holidays off.
…well, I guess we need essential services like police, fire, medical, etc.
…and if they’re going to work, they’re gonna need food, so restaurants should be open too.
…and if they all gotta get to work, we gotta have gas stations open as well.
…and with all these other people off, people are gonna vote then want the rest of the day to do things, so we should probably have stores and entertainment venues open also.
And now all the “minimum wage” people are stuck working on a holiday, while the people who can afford to be off actually get off.
Rinse and repeat for every current holiday.
To be honest i can’t tell if this is satire, spoof or against day off? I mean emergency social services are essential. Food and the rest are not, you do your shopping the day before and bring a lunch, self serve pumps are everywhere anywyas and entertainment services are not essential.
It’s not satire, it’s 100% the reasoning that would be used in this argument. That’s the train of thought that we took towards covid.
In a long period like covid I can see part of the argument, but in a 1 day period food services are not essential. At all. Humans can survive without food for a day if they were dumb enough not to prepare.
Sure, I agree. But the CEOs of McDonalds and Wendy’s don’t want to miss a single day of profits and their wealth gives them a lot more political power than I have.
I used to work in a cinema.
Christmas day was our single busiest day of the year, every year. Even with traditional Christmas activities like having family dinners and gift-giving, people still wanted to go see a movie. They couldn’t stay home with their families for just one day so we minimum wage saps didn’t get to stay home with ours.
Nothing I wrote was satire. This is exactly how it is in the US.
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If you have a white-collar job, enjoy your day off.
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If you have a blue-collar job, you might not have to work, depending on what holiday it is.
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If you have a service job, fuck your holiday because money.
Going to the movies for Christmas is an American Jewish tradition, usually followed up by Chinese food
I’m going to old all over the place. When I was a teen in the late 90s I worked at a grocery store. We were open 24/7 except three times per year. We closed at noon on Thanksgiving (reopened at 5am the next day), noon on Christmas Eve through Christmas Day, and noon on New Years Eve. We always had assholes come in to try to “get one thing that I forgot” but turned them away because they’d inevitably try to load up a full cart. We were given strict instructions to turn everyone away starring at noon sharp.
Now, grocery stores just stay open. Like, really, you can’t close even a couple of times per year to let people be with their families?
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Tell that to all the companies that were starting black Friday on Thursday night.
I can’t wait for the Election Day car sales!
Oh, we are not proud of it. We’re trying to chip away at the absolutely fucked power structure, but the people in charge of the system have a vested interest in preserving it, with all of its fucked up little idiosyncrasies like this.
All of those drawbacks are bullshit.
Early voting and mail in ballots should be more available to everyone. That’s not a reason not to make it a holiday.
Private employers can’t be forced to observe a holiday. That’s not a reason not to make it a holiday. People required to work could still go before or after work, and would see reduced wait times because public employees would be able to go during work hours.
Finding childcare for the day is a problem anyway, as polling places are often schools, and the kids are sent home anyway. If it was a holiday, you could take your kids with you to the polls and then go to the park. That’s almost a reason not to make it a holiday, but not really.
If banks, post offices, and schools are all closed, a lot of businesses will also close because work slows down. Other employers, like retailers, food service, and entertainment venues like movie theaters would all see an uptick in business, and would probably offer extra pay for those shifts.
Yes to mail in ballots. Yes to early voting. Yes to a national election holiday. Reduce the barriers to voting. No to ID laws. No to voter roll purges. No to proof of citizenship requirements.
Over here all employers have to give employees 4h to vote. So if it’s open from 8 to 8 and you work from 8 to 4 they don’t have to give you time off, but if you work 8 to 6 they have to cut your shift at 4 instead.
That’s a good system. Let’s do that.
I live overseas so I’m eligible for an absentee ballot.
I filled it out and submitted it a few weeks ago.
It was all done through the government website for my state and email.
Couldn’t be easier.
Everyone should be eligible for mail in or early voting.
ID and citizenship requirements seem like pretty basic requisites to voting, what’s wrong with those?
Because not everyone has an ID or proof that they are a citizen, and in the United States, you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. When you register to vote, you fill out a form stating you are a citizen and elligible to vote. There are existing mechanisms to check that voters are eligible. If you lie or commit fraud, those are crimes. There’s a paper trail, and if it were an actual problem, there would be proof that it’s happening.
Homeless people have the right to vote. Forgetful and disorganized people have the right to vote. Hermits and people who survive house fires have the right to vote. ID requirements or requiring proof of citizenship creates an unnecessary barrier that disenfranchises more legal voter than the illegal votes it prevents. Because that’s the point of them, they want to stop legal voters from voting.
But you can’t ignore very real problems with increasing the pool of ignorant voters, since whoever has the most access to that pool will have an advantage because these ignorant voters can be taken advantage of simply because they are ignorant. Should people be voting if they don’t know how the system works or what the candidates even stand for? If you can’t be bothered to care about it enough to go through minimal requirements, do we need to go out of our way to shove a ballot in their hands?
And yes, I acknowledge that the kind of thinking I outlined above can be used to repress voters as well. I guess my point is that these policies cut both ways. It’s not such a clear cut answer as “give everyone a ballot”, because that can (and has) very very easily turn into “give them a ballot and suggest who they should vote for”.
Yes, because ensuring everyone can vote is how I know I will always be able to vote. Democracy is about self-determination. There is no competency requirement for people making decisions for themselves.
Now, if you told me we were going to have competency requirements for candidates, thats something I might support, depending on how it’s implemented.
Inconsistent access and inconsistent standards, for the most part.
A classic example is how certain states (Texas, for instance) will assert that gun licenses qualify as a valid ID but state university student IDs will not. Another is in how IDs - like driver’s licenses - have a fee associated with registration and renewal, which amounts to a poll tax. A third is that citizenship isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for voting in municipal and state elections. So requiring someone to be a citizen before accessing a ballot becomes an unconstitutional burden at the state and local level.
Then there’s the fact that we already have a voter id system. It’s called your voter registration card. You typically get one after you’ve registered to vote in your municipality. The fight over voter ID is that you need a second piece of identification on top of the registration card.
Broadly speaking, if everyone was afforded equal access to a single uniform ID document at no cost, there wouldn’t be a problem. But so much of the Voter ID rules don’t establish homogeneous ID requirements. Implementation is left up to the states. So states with a history of hostility towards democratic rule can back-door disenfranchisement into the process of obtaining these documents.
There is currently no voter registration card where I’m from. All you have to do is say your name and they check you off. If you aren’t registered in the area, you can bring a piece of mail with your name and address to prove you live in that precinct, or someone to vouch for you, then you are given a ballot and they add you to the registration for next time. But yes it sounds like there is a lot of variation in how states implement or assure the integrity of their elections, and all of them are prone to certain kinds of abuse, whether it’s discouraging voters or vote harvesting or some other illegal mechanism for influencing elections in favor of the established powers.
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.
Yet they’re perfectly willing to shut the entire fucking government down willy-nilly because they didn’t get some piece of pork barrel spending they promised their megadonors. Fucking buffoons.
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.
No. All that needs to be done is make universal vote by mail the standard.
My state has been doing it for 24 years now, this will be the 7th Presidential election (2000, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24) and 13th Congressional election. It works, it increases voter participation, there’s a built in paper trail, there’s nothing to not like about it.
Remember how 2014 had a record low turnout for a mid-term election?
"the lowest it’s been in any election cycle since World War II, according to early projections by the United States Election Project.
Just 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots as of last Tuesday, continuing a steady decline in midterm voter participation that has spanned several decades. The results are dismal, but not surprising – participation has been dropping since the 1964 election, when voter turnout was at nearly 49 percent."
Meanwhile, in my state:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2014/11/voter_turnout_of_695_percent_i.html
"Turnout in this fall’s election reached 69.5 percent, just half a percent short of turnout in 2010 and 2006 and 1.5 percent better than in 2002, Secretary of State Kate Brown said Wednesday.
More than 1.5 million Oregonians cast ballots, a record high for a non-presidential election, while nearly 700,000 registered voters sat out."
I got home last night from work, voted, and ate dinner. Got up to go to work and tossed the ballot in my mailbox this morning. It was amazing. Being able to get an absentee ballot in NY has been absolutely wonderful.
I am a bit worried about my signature though lol I can’t remember if I signed with my stupid fresh out of highschool “script” signature on previous ballots that I used on my social security card, or my general signature I’ve been using for everything for decades now…
I mean, if it gets rejected, they will let you know. Good news is you can always re-register and update your signature.
Here, we have the motor voter registration, so it’s the same signature as my drivers license.
There is one argument against everyone voting by mail that I accept:
People could be making “let’s go vote together”-meetups to make sure their friends are voting what they “should” - which would destroy freedom and privacy of the vote which are fundamental.
The same can also happen in abusive relationships where one partner can take away the freedom to vote what they want from the other by standing behind them when they fill out their ballot.Voting by mail is safe, but because of those two it should NEVER be the de-facto standard. It’s great to have more people voting - but whoever can should still vote personally if possible.
I know the setup of the voting booths is way worse in the US than here in Germany so both the way to them and the lines in front of them are longer, so that decision might flip towards voting by mail quicker, but imho voting in person should remain the standard - just because noone can look over your shoulder when you’re making your cross in that setting
Generally, it’s less “lets go vote together!” than it is “lets drop off our ballots together!”
Coercive voting is a crime, in 24 years we haven’t seen an incidence of it yet, but that was one of the FUD arguments when we voted for it.
“What’s to stop an employer from requiring employees to bring in their ballots and vote the company line?”
Well, it’s a crime. If you don’t trust your employees to vote, do you trust that not one will rat you out?
From my point of view both the police and the judges are getting heavily influenced by people with a less democratic agenda in mind.
Something like that would’ve never worked years ago - but with 4 more years of Trump handpicking judges? I wouldn’t even be sure the Supreme Court would strike something lime that down if it’s done subtle enough.
The military has allowed it since the civil war.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/debate-over-mail-voting-dates-back-civil-war-180976091/
Same way for Colorado. It’s all the benefit of electronic voting, but with the added safety of paper ballots. And it’s a format we’re all familiar with from school – bubble in our answer (just with a pen instead of a number 2 pencil), and then turn it in. The counters feed the ballots into the counting machine, which tallies up the votes, then the ballots are stored in nice boxes, which can be retrieved and hand-counted on the off-chance the machines get hacked or otherwise…tampered with (Tina Peters, I’m looking at YOU…as you go to jail for 9 years! :3).
“Those against making Election Day a federal holiday argue that such a large focus on one day is misguided, since almost 70% of ballots in the 2020 presidential election were cast before Election Day.”
___These are the same people that think that more testing will make the number of COVID cases go up.
My first thought as well. “We don’t need to make it easier to vote on election day, because not many people vote on election day” - let’s stop and think really hard about that for a minute.
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.
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.
My impression is that when most people mention “ranked choice” voting, what they really mean is “ranked choice voting with instant runoff” which is functionally identical to STAR voting.
The two are not functionally identical at all.
Ranked Choice is a broken Ordinal voting system.
All Ordinal voting systems are flawed, because when you have to rank A over B, you will eventually reach a point where C can become a spoiler candidate.
Cardinal voting systems are immune from this, because you rate the candidates independent of each other. It doesn’t matter how many candidates are on the ballot, because you’re rating them vs your support, not their rank vs each other.
Cardinal systems allow you to rate two candidates the same, either with full support or full disdain.
Do you have a link that explains what you’re talking about? I’m having a hard time reconciling my understanding of Ranked Choice (with instant runoff) with the downfalls you describe.
Edit: I came across this: https://betterchoices.vote/Cardinal It explains the spoiler problem with Ordinal voting systems, but also illustrates problems with Cardinal voting systems. Interesting stuff.
I’m so glad I found this site! I think I’ve been converted to a Consensus Voting proponent instead of Instant Runoff.
You can read more about it here: https://betterchoices.vote/ConsensusVoting
Ahh, the bullshit “bullet voting” nonsense.
That’s a sort of made up problem with cardinal systems that ignores one tiny little issue. Approval, is a Cardinal voting method that is 100% bullet voting, because there’s no scale. Just a simple yes and no per candidate.
It gives better results than every single Ordinal system.
These geeks study election systems in far too much detail. And have a handy little chart of Baysian Regret Basically they did math and computer shit to figure out how “happy” people would be with the results of a set number of simulated elections with roughly identical factors except the voting system used and how honestly vs strategic you are in your voting,
Approval, which is 100% bullet voting, and still comes out better for overall satisfaction of results than its closest Ordinal competitor.
Consensus is just Condorcet voting. Technically, Approval is Condorcet compliant. It might actually be the only true way to find the Condorcet winner.
Anyway, there’s more, and I should link more.
How do you counter the arguments about strategic votes in Cardinal voting systems? Those arguments are explained here: https://betterchoices.vote/Cardinal
Put simply, Approval is still subject to strategic voting that undermines the purpose of the system. In practice, nobody is going to approve of a centrist candidate from the other party because that approval vote might be the only reason that their party loses.
Specifically, which problem do you think that ranked choice proponents are incorrect about?
Ranked choice voting does one thing, allows people to vote for the candidates they actually want and that’s it. All kinds of people try to shoehorn in other ideas, but at the end of the day the one and only problem its intensed to solve is people having to vote for candidates they don’t like.
See, it’s that one thing you mentioned.
The voting for the candidates people actually want.
That’s what it doesn’t actually do.
What Ranked Choice actually does is remove non-viable third parties from the election. That’s it. You can throw a sympathy vote over to the third party of your choice, but the next line on the ballot will be the major party candidate, because you certainly don’t want the other side to win. Say you throw a vote for the Greens, but your next choice is going to be the main ticket Dem, or else you risk the Republicans winning.
The problem comes when that third party just reaches viability. See, if the Greens are eliminated first, all the votes on the ticket then go to the Dem, but if somehow the Greens slip past the Dems, then the Dems are eliminated first, and the Dem first voters likely didn’t list the Greens as their next choice.
And here’s the thing. Republicans know that if the Greens knock out the Dems, then Republicans win. So a chunk of the Republican base strategically vote for the Greens as their first choice, and Republican as their second. And by lowering the support for their own candidate, they’ve secured the election for that candidate. This is the only voting system in existence that lets you show less support to a candidate to help that candidate win.
Tell me that shit isn’t broken, and I’ll call you a liar.
And that’s just one of a dozen show stopping faults in that voting system.
The next is ballot exhaustion.
If you rate A then B then C, but they get knocked off the ballot B then C and then A, your votes for B and C are thrown out completely. So if literally every single vote listed B as their second choice, B would be eliminated even if they were universally acceptable to the voting public. But it doesn’t matter, they were eliminated in an earlier round so universal support just isn’t looked at.
And finally, what’s the little issue of the rankings themselves. All we know is that you prefer A to B, and B to C. But how much do you actually prefer A to B by. and is that the same amount that you prefer B to C by.
Do you rate A and B as mostly the same but then rate C as a sort of horrible monster who you only begrudgingly support? We don’t know because that info isn’t collected on the ballot. STAR fixes that one, each candidate can have the same score in STAR, and with the scale going 0-5 you can get somewhat granular with your preferences.
If a majority of people vote Republican and they win, that’s a good thing. It seems like you don’t really understand ranked choice voting. It’s not perfect but it’s absolutely better than our current system.
I do understand Ranked Choice, and understand that it’s actually worse than our current system except for one small area. And that’s the elimination of non-viable spoiler parties.
Ranked Choice eliminates them from consideration.
As to its real world application, Ranked Choice is constantly fucking up elections.
https://electowiki.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election
If you’ll notice in that breakdown, the number of exhausted ballots was twice the margin of victory.
All this stems from the fact that RCV is really just First Past the Post, but done a bunch of times on a single ballot.
You cannot solve the problems of plurality by iterating plurality.
It’s a bad system that is, in many ways, worse than the one we already have.
Opponents counter that a holiday may not significantly increase turnout and could even create challenges for some workers.
Ok well can we collectively agree that the opponents to this are full of shit? Like, this is less than a no brainer. This is a negative brainer. In that to oppose a national election day holiday, your aim must be less people voting. There’s one party that does well when less working people vote, and surprise surprise, it’s the party that keeps denying us a federal election day holiday. GEE, I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY.
Trump said this week of Democratic voting proposals. “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
From a 2020 Vanity Fair Article, discussing how Democrats wanted to make it easier/safer for people to vote during the pandemic.
