We make such a big honking deal about participating in the democratic process, and we have taken it upon ourselves to whip democracy on anyone we think needs it. Yet, we have to work on election day. This ought to be our holiest day, after July 4th, just like Christmas and Easter.
I think we need to send letters to our congresspeople, en masse, and demand a new national holiday: Election Day.
Those outside of the U. S., feel free to chip in. As you have seen, we need all the help we can get.
Vlad/Igor (taking election day off so I can wait in line and vote)
I work for County Government. We get the day off every other year. :shrug:
It’s one of our ‘None Priority’ holidays. Which means, the offices are to be kept open, with at least minumal staff. You can choose to take the day off but you have to coordinate with other people in the office. I’m working on the 2nd this year, I’m taking my election day holiday on the 12th. I’ll have no problem voteing.
Our ‘non-priority’ holidays may seem kinda strange (we have 3 or 4), but it allows the County Government services to be available to folks that have the day off and use it to do business with the county. And, county employees can choose to use the day to extend a weekend or whatever.
Election day isn’t a national holiday because there are already two holidays in November. Election day falls close to Veteran’s Day on 11 November. Thanksgiving then falls two weeks later.
I thought that employers were required to let their employees have time off to vote, but apparently this isn’t true. A friend’s sister is a nurse whose 12-hour shift covers the voting time, and they won’t let her off to vote. She didn’t vote absentee because she didn’t know early enough what her shift was going to be.
I agree it should be a holiday. Make Veteran’s Day the same as Election Day, if necessary. That would actually be appropriate.
It is in most states. See this chart. Only Idaho and North Dakota do not have any requirements for employers to allow employees time off to vote. Some states require advance notice from employees. Some states allow paid time off, provided the time is actually used to vote. Some states no not force employers to give time off if “sufficient time” exists either before or after the employee’s shift to vote.
I’m a UAW worker, we just added election day to our list of bargained days off last contract.
Personally, I’d rather have the day after as a holiday, I’ll find a way to get to the polls or absentee, but I stay up late watching all the coverage and celebrating/crying in my beer depending…getting to work in the wee hours the next morning’s harsh!
Call me cynical, but I suspect that having Election Day as a holiday would make voting go down. If it’s a holiday, people will either take the Monday and make it a four-day travelling weekend or just spend the day off doing something holiday-ish. They’ll be too busy having fun to vote. With it not being a holiday, voting provides a nice excuse to miss a bit of work for the non-time-clocked crowd.
Election Day is always the first Tuesday in November (never on Monday).
Voter turnout has been so low lately that it would be kind of a farce to make it a holiday. And since Veteran’s Day is a true holiday for some (a day off), those people might object to losing a holiday in order to vote. So I withdraw my suggestion about combining Veteran’s Day with Election Day.
Thanks for the link, Q.E.D. I’ll pass it along, although the nurse I spoke of lives in Georgia, so she isn’t guaranteed paid time off to vote, and she could be required to give written notice, and her employees get to pick the time. Yeah Georgia.
On the one hand, if they made it a holiday, I and most other workers still wouldn’t get the day off. We don’t get Columbus Day off, and that’s a holiday. So the only net effect would be that the banks and post office would be closed. Yay.
On the other hand, if I actually needed the day off, I could get it off by asking. But I don’t need it. So I can use that day at some other time when it’s more convenient to me.
It’s not a holiday or on a day when most people could be reasonably expected to be off-work (like a Saturday) because that would make sense, and as we all know, making sense is against government policy.
Something is seriously wrong in that state when it comes to voting…I know that’s not going out on the limb, but something inheritly wrong with the whole process must be the norm there.
Actually, to be fair, Florida’s not the only state that’s had problems, nearly every other state in the US has had similar problems. They just don’t get the attention that Florida does, because it was Florida that the election hinged upon last time.
Actually, it’s the Tuesday after the first Monday, for reasons ranging from the religious (November 1 is All Saints’ Day) to economic. The law dates to 1845, and Tuesday was selected so that people who had an arduous journey to the polls would be able to attend church Sunday, travel to the voting site, then return home by the end of the week.
Lilyofthe Valley meant that people would skip Monday work, then “stretch” the weekend to four days by using Tuesday as an additional "fun day instead of a voting opportunity.
Q.E.D.: I don’t see Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, or Virginia on that chart you linked. That site’s claim of “representing all 50 states” seems a bit exaggerated.
I’m right there with ya in the head-shaking, but comfort myself with the knowledge that we had enough concessions in the same contract to sorta make up for it.
