Making Election Day a holiday would not necessarily involve adding a new holiday, which employers might resist—particularly following the addition of Juneteenth as a national holiday last week. Amber Herrle and E. Dionne, Jr. Perry and Anthony Barr Monday, April 19, Furthermore, making this small shift would celebrate the purpose and sacrifice of our fighting forces.
After all, what do our veterans fight for, if not for democracy itself? And there is no better way to secure democracy than to ensure that everyone has not only the right to vote, but also the meaningful opportunity to cast their ballots. Establishing Election Day as a holiday, taken together with the pending federal voting rights reforms, would go a long way towards stabilizing democracy and ensuring basic democratic rights. These changes would send the message that voting is not a privilege to be bought with job security and time to spare, but rather an essential responsibility every person ought to undertake.
These changes would send a strong rebuke to those who are attempting to scale back voting rights and make it more difficult for African-Americans and Latinos to vote. It would also blunt the impact of many of these baldly anti-democratic moves—opening the doors to the house as Republicans attempt to shut the windows.
In a number of states, polling places have been closed in minority neighborhoods, which has created long lines and tremendous inconvenience for affected voters—inconvenience with a cost, especially for those paid hourly wages. Litigation pending before the Supreme Court this term in Brnovich v. Declaring Election Day a holiday has been proposed various times in Congress; it's a popular idea. But Gupta said that there's been a "lack of political will" to give the initiative some momentum.
Senator Bernie Sanders has certainly tried — he introduced the "Democracy Day Act" in , which proposed making Election Day a federal holiday. The bill has no cosponsors, but the concept was supported by every Democratic candidate for president, excluding Mike Bloomberg and now-nominee Joe Biden. And I think on Election Day we should have a national holiday which says, 'you don't have to rush to vote.
Hailey said the country needs a "cultural shift" to prioritize voting. And she thinks corporate America has been leading the way, pointing out several businesses, including Walmart and Coca-Cola, that have announced paid time off and other accommodations to make voting easier for employees on November 3. He says it's more important to spread voting out over a period of days and methods.
Concentrating voters into a single day risks congesting polling places, even more so than some already are. Like Perez, Becker thinks giving voters more time and opportunity to vote is the best approach.
With those options — early in-person voting and more voter awareness on how to vote by mail — voter turnout appears to be trending upward. By Monday morning, nearly 60 million had already voted early across the country, closing in on half of 's total voter turnout.
Ralph Northam signed into law a measure that, among other things, makes Election Day a state holiday in the commonwealth. Why isn't Election Day a national holiday yet? I'm proud to sign these bills into law. So why aren't more states doing it? And might they in the face of the challenges to in-person voting posed by coronavirus? I put those questions -- and more -- to Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a longtime observer of elections and electoral reform.
Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below. Cillizza: Ralph Northam declared election day a state holiday in How common is this in the country? Read More. Ornstein : It is not common to have Election Day as a holiday, although some state primaries, like South Carolina, have been held on Saturdays to make it easier for working people to vote. More for convenience than anything else, most states hold their general elections to sync with the federal election date of the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November.
That date was set in legislation in to make sure that in an agrarian society, people could travel to vote and be back home both for Market Day and for the Sabbath.
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