# Should businesses be required to give Election Day off with pay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921 "2014-12-22T16:28:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/21 "2014-12-22T18:53:34Z")
> [@Cyros](#): > > In Canada, by law, employees must be given 3 consecutive hours to vote. If polls are open from 830am to 830pm and your shift runs from 11am to 7pm then your employer must give you time off with pay to vote. It is the employers choice as to when they provide the time off (1/2 hour at the beginning of the shift, 1 1/2 hours at the end or 3 hours in the middle) allowing them to accommodate their business needs. That’s just stupid. In your example, the employee has 4 hours when he is not working that the polls are open. Why is it the employers burden to accommodate voting? ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/22 "2014-12-22T18:57:01Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > IIRC, this already happens on every federal holiday, with no issues. An estimate in 2008 was that adding an extra federal holiday cost nearly half a billion dollars in holiday pay and lost productivity within the federal government alone. [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/15/bushs-holiday-extension-leaves-450-million-bill/](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/15/bushs-holiday-extension-leaves-450-million-bill/) Private companies aren’t bound by federal holidays, it’s custom to get them off but my company for example on takes a few of them as official holidays. We only get about half of them, so you’d have to create some new mechanism to enforce this along with fines, regulations and an exception process. Then there’s the timing - there’s a federal holiday the following week for Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving later in the same month. Since most folks take the Friday after Thanksgiving off as well, you now have removed 4 days from the work month - there would be significant productivity impact of all that holiday time in a short period. I never argued that it couldn’t be done, just that it’s a very expensive choice, it doesn’t IMO achieve what you want, and there are lower cost existing options. I suspect most companies wouldn’t adopt the paid holiday (as many haven’t for MLK day, Columbus Day, or Veterans Day) and many people who got it would take the holiday and not vote anyway. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/23 "2014-12-22T18:59:41Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > That’s just stupid. In your example, the employee has 4 hours when he is not working that the polls are open. Why is it the employers burden to accommodate voting? Is it really that stupid? It seems reasonable to me that employees should have the ability to vote. If they were scheduled to work the entire time the polls were open, for example, then that would not be in the public interest, and it makes sense to require that they have a reasonable amount of time to vote. So, is the requirement that they get a block of contiguous 3 hours really that bad? It seems like it’s probably more than people need, most times. But not egregiously so. I think that, whatever amount of time they need to vote, it should be contiguous, since there might be a commute required. If you have an hour off before and after work, and an hour for lunch, that’s no good if you’re an hour away from your polling place. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/24 "2014-12-22T19:08:15Z")
Geez, absolutely not! There are already so many darn regulations for employers. I don’t have a big problem with the idea of giving a block of time like 2 or 4 hours off, but even that is still another regulation. How does a company prove that they complied with the regulations, and how much effort do they spend proving it? But I’m not convinced that time off would make much of a difference. Washington state doesn’t have voting booths - everything here is done by mail (like the absentee ballots other states make available by request), and we get our ballots about three weeks before the election. We can mail or hand-deliver them anytime before the last day of voting. And there’s obviously no ID issues either. So, no one in WA has ever failed to vote because they had to work, and yet we’re still pretty close to the national average for voting. I think we had 38% at the last elections. If people aren’t motivated enough to vote at home, for free, without ID, anytime within a three-week period, then I think we have to agree that the fundamental problem cannot be solved by making voting easier to do. The bottom line is that 60% of people don’t want to vote. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/25 "2014-12-22T19:15:38Z")
[California already requires](https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/time-off-to-vote.htm) employers to allow employees time to vote, up to two hours of which is paid if their work hours prevent them from voting during the times that pols are open: > [@](#): > > Employees are eligible for paid time off for the purpose of voting only if they do not have sufficient time outside of working hours to vote. The intent of the law is to provide an opportunity to vote to workers who would not be able to do so because of their jobs. Then again CA government is awful. This aspect seems to work just fine. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/26 "2014-12-22T19:20:02Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > I’d say low voter turnout is a consequence of the Electoral College. Turnout is worse in off-presidential years where the EC is irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/27 "2014-12-22T19:23:23Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > [California already requires](https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/time-off-to-vote.htm) employers to allow employees time to vote, up to two hours of which is paid if their work hours prevent them from voting during the times that pols are open: A lot of states make similar provisions. [http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html](http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html) ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/28 "2014-12-22T19:29:26Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > The bottom line is that 60% of people don’t want to vote. This Maybe a better proposal would be county paid buffet’s of breakfast and bar-b-cue. That would get more voters to turn out than paid time off at work. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/29 "2014-12-22T19:31:33Z")
Very few people work long enough hours so that they are not available when the polls are open. I have no trouble finding time to vote either before or after work, and I have a long commute. In any case more and more places are moving to absentee ballots, so it soon won’t matter. If there were no other issues, perhaps companies should require people to vote to get the pay? But mostly why give 8 hours off for a ten or fifteen minute task? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/30 "2014-12-22T19:37:05Z")
If you want to increase turnout give a tax credit for voting, or even easier than that just give out cash. A mandatory day off might reduce turn-out while people head elsewhere to engage in leisure time activity. ---
**Author:** ![JerrySTL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e274bd/32.png) [@JerrySTL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerrySTL)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/31 "2014-12-22T19:45:16Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > The companies the employees work for. > > One day, every two years. Wow, what a financial blow. We have elections of one sort or another every year. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/32 "2014-12-22T19:53:42Z")
> [@JerrySTL](#): > > We have elections of one sort or another every year. At least two a year in my town, and sometimes more if there are special elections. And really, it’s the off-year elections for municipal and county officials that have the lowest turnout, even though, ironically, they’re the ones with the most impact on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/33 "2014-12-22T19:58:01Z")
There simply isn’t any justification for giving a full paid day off for a task that takes between five minutes and (allowing for extra travel, waiting in line, etc.) an hour. There isn’t much basis for accommodating citizens so lazy they can’t find those minutes outside their normal workday - leaving the house or getting home a half hour earlier or later, taking part of a lunch hour, even asking for a small amount of time off to run vote. The minority of people caught between work and voting choices (work very long shifts, have to be out of town or have very long commutes between home/district and work) have absentee voting at their disposal. So no, giving a national holiday to vote is not a reasonable idea; for every person it would enable, it would likely result in five - ten - more - using the day to fuck off and do nothing, including vote. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/34 "2014-12-22T21:11:37Z")
Here in Texas, such a measure would be pointless. It’s already EXTREMELY easy to vote at supermarkets and other public places for weeks before Election Day. I myself almost never vote on Election Day itself; I almost always vote long before then. In Texas, at least, no one can claim with a straight face “I didn’t vote because my cheapo boss woulkdn’t give me time to get to the poll.” ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/35 "2014-12-22T22:19:44Z")
Voting is easy, you don’t need a day off for it. And if it’s STILL too much trouble, most places have absentee balloting, or voting early by mail. Pisses me off when people don’t vote “because it’s inconvenitent.” My grandmother voted, with the help of one of her great-granddaughters, three weeks before she died, in November 2012. Twenty two straight presidential elections for her, she didn’t whine about it being too inconvenient. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/36 "2014-12-22T22:22:33Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Low voter turnout is very common in the USA. What if we required all businesses (except for media/ journalism and emergency services) to close, and give their employees the day off with pay? I imagine that this would bring far more voters in. Since nobody celebrates Columbus Day, if there is a debate about too many holidays, we could get rid of that. No. Why must someone else always have to pay? Sheeze it gets annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/37 "2014-12-22T22:50:48Z")
How big an election qualifies for this? Presidential election is one thing, but what about someone running for school board with no other elections going on? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2014, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/38 "2014-12-23T00:26:09Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > The companies the employees work for. > > One day, every two years. Wow, what a financial blow. Assuming that the businesses would have to shut their doors (after all, if you’re giving all employees the day off with pay, the businesses would have to close. And does this include the government?)… anyway, assuming these businesses and the gov’t has to close I guess you’re looking at about a $41 billion hit to GDP merely for the loss of commerce. Then you add the amount paid to the employees (approx $16 billion/day) and you’re now talking about a $57 billion program merely to increase voter participation. You’re right… that _is_ a financial blow! :eek: Wages cite: [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0646.pdf](http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0646.pdf) Take total employees, multiply by average annual earnings, divide by 365. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/39 "2014-12-23T00:27:50Z")
Election day should be a national holiday, so yes, everyone should be able to participate without fear of retribution ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2014, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921/40 "2014-12-23T00:32:59Z")
Actually, I was low on GDP figures - assumed $15 trillion/year when it’s more like $17 trillion/year, so that make the GDP hit to be $46 billion and the total hit $63 billion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-businesses-be-required-to-give-election-day-off-with-pay/707921.md?page=3)