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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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
In Germany we always have elections on Sundays so it's basically a public holiday (unlike in the US where stores are still open). There are enough places to vote (though you're assigned to the one in your district for statistical reasons) so you rarely have to stand in line. I've seen pictures of voting lines in the US and was shocked...
Mail-in votes are available to everyone and it's being used a lot but for many people going to the voting place in person has more meaning to it. Some even put on a suit, but that could also be because they are on the way to church.
Electronic voting was discussed but the consensus is that it's not safe enough.
The question if it should be a public holiday in the US is weird to me as it is a very clear YES and also YES people should definitely always get a day off on public holidays wtf
I've seen pictures of voting lines in the US and was shocked...
Yeah, but those aren't ubiquitous.
If you live in a suburb or rural area you can count on a dozen nearby polling stations and a 5 minute in and out.
If you live anywhere that supported the confederacy and might vote blue then you might have to deal with a 4-5 hour wait, coupled with provisional ballots that are not counted, voting roll purges, and other minor issues.
I guess what I'm saying is those crazy lines aren't too much of an issue so long as you try to vote in a part of the country Hitler himself didn't write of as an example of genetic enforcement to follow in Mein Kampf.
Thanks for the clarification!
The only reason to not make voting day a holiday is because the very people preferring you not vote are losing profits and power don’t want the people worked the hardest to have a say in changing the system.
Easier solution than trying to have a single day off for everyone:
Since early voting is a thing, all employers should be required to give workers 1 paid flex day during voting season so they can vote.
They can even tie the flex day to evidence that they actually voted, so it truly encourages voting instead of just being an extra day off.
It's almost as if people should be paid enough and have enough PTO to live and enjoy it, as well as vote.
Yes. There are no drawbacks.
The Republican Party benefits from low voter turnout, so they'd block this at every opportunity.