I mean, really — it's at least as important, as a civil society, as the other "national holiday" dates. And providing it as a holiday would remove a lot of the brouhaha over early voting and polling place hours and the like.
Of course, if there really is an effort to restrain voting, especially voting by folks for whom getting to the polls during a working day is non-trivial, then it's obvious why this idea has never and will never get any traction. Let alone the "It will hurt small businesses and reduce profits and make our economy all higgledy-piggledy" fearmongering.
This actually came up in a conversation with my daughter last evening. And except for "it will cost some people some money," I couldn't think of a single reason not to do it, except that giving everyone the opportunity to vote is not high on enough people's priority lists.
Reshared post from +Bernie Sanders
Even if it is not a national holiday, employers should be required to give paid time off for voting, similar to jury duty.
My problem with this is that I think it would disenfranchise lower class workers even more. Since when do most minimum wage workers get national holidays off? Are they going to force the 24/7/365 restaurants to close on this day as well? Are Wal-Mart and McDonalds going to give up an opportunity to make a bunch of money when people have a day off and aren't under family obligations?
Making it a national holiday would only ensure that government workers and those with good employment would be more available for voting, unless I'm missing something.
I'd rather push for more mail-in ballots or online voting (if there was ever a chance of that being secure). The thing that has improved my voting attendance more than anything is Colorado's permanent absentee ballot option.
+Brint Kriebel The thought occurred to me. Part of it made want to hand-wave that as logistics, but it's a worthwhile question — especially as we see increased creep into traditional national holidays by companies out to make a buck (as the stores start staying open on Thanksgiving night).
I guess my partial answer is, at least for starters, how do they handle it in other nations that declare national holidays on election days?
(And it's not just minimum wage workers — think of all those new crews and talking heads that have to cover the election!)
+Shannon Turlington
Really? Time off to vote is built into the election laws up here.
+Pat G COMMUNIST!
+Dave Hill Nah just Canadian so more republican at the moment. 😉 Though I do have to laugh at the whole communism / democracy false dichotomy.
The trend here as far as I can tell is to make it harder for people to vote, not easier.
+Shannon Turlington That's the whole point – the only people a party wants to vote are its known supporters.