New holiday?

[Linda/NE]

Former Presidents Ford and Carter are proposing that election day be made a National holiday in hopes of avoiding a similar situation as we saw in the last Presidential election.

If I understood correctly, I think they are only proposing it be a holiday when there is a presidential election.

What do you think??

[Lynda/WA]

I've heard a couple of talk show debate this. One of the hosts said he suspected it may actually *decrease* the number of voters. Why? Because statistically most people take mini vacations from Friday to Monday. I got the impression it is to avoid traffic so they return on Monday. If Tuesday was a holiday they may just extend and have a 4 day weekend for the price of one vaction day or a 5 day weekend for the price of 2 days.

My side of the relation has alot of farmers. they get no holidays. DH frequently has to work on holidays. The reason is because if the industrial plant isn't operating they bring in maintenance. Frequently that means hiring DHs company to provide backup power. If anything this may make it HARDER for him to vote.

Oregon is a vote by mail state so the point was brought up that this would decrease the number of those votes received. People tend to vote at the last minute. If it was a holiday then the post office wouldn't be working which would mean all of those votes - including every states absentee ballots - would need to be received the day prior.

Guess I haven't been persuaded that this would be a helpful thing. If the problem is getting workers then why not do a system like jury duty? If you are working a voting poll then the employer has to let you take the day. Even if it means you have to use a vacation day (like DH does for jury duty).

[angie r]

Isn't it a federal law that all citizens be given time off to vote?

[jbaxter]

IMHO I don't think that making election day a holiday will help at all. i remeber working for the state during one election year and they gave presidential election day off so the workers could go vote - those that normally don't vote used it to go fishing or whatever. if people want to vote they will find a way to vote

now i will agree to having all the booths nation wide open and close at the same time time zone adjusted ie - eastern opens at 9am, central opens at 8am etc..so that people aaren't swayed by how the other caost is voting

[RCT]

Originally posted by angie r
Isn't it a federal law that all citizens be given time off to vote?

Yes it is a law...and I too think that if you make it a holiday, less people would actually vote, because they would have the day off...and be doing something else JMHO

[Lynda/WA]

I hadn't heard anything about it being the law but if it's like jury duty that wouldn't make much of a difference. At least not in real life. For jury duty they have to allow you the time off but the company can specify that you use vacation days. For example, DH was hit with jury duty 2 times in CA within just over a year. He would have had to first use vacation days, then use sick days. He checked with corporate headquaters since we had visions of an O.J. trial. Luckily he made it in to the first group of jurers and after *staring* at the defense's female attorney he flustered her and she let him go without cause. That was early enough in the morning that he was able to go to work, work late, and make up the time without losing a vacation day. Since they can't take just a couple of hours, I guess he would have been required to take an entire day off as a vacation day if he wanted to vote during the work day. He just goes after work. DH's company manual says the above for the policy for jury duty, military leave, etc and says as allowed by federal state, and local laws. Since voting time isn't mentioned specifically, I'm assuming it's the same. For military leave it says that if the laws forbid the use of paid leave then unpaid leave will be granted.

I'll try and remember to ask my Dad what their companies policy is. His company requires you to schedule your vaction a full week at a time. He is one of 3 people that does the job. If he were to call in sick one of the other two would need to pull his shift as well. So if he were to leave for a couple of hours they'd need to pay one of the other two workers to come in and cover for him.

I'm curious about changing the times so all zones are voting at the same time. Wouldn't that be unfair? Lets say that the east coast starts at 8 Am and closes at 8 pm. The next zone opens at 9 and closes at 9. Next opens at 10 closes at 10. And the west coast opens at 11, closes at 11. Don't most people vote in the evenings? Wouldn't that give CA, OR, and WA an advantage? If work typically ends at 5 they have 6 hours to vote in while the east coast only has 3? They are all closing at the same time in real time but since we leave our lives base on the time zone the effect would be different. Make sense?

The biggest change I'd like to see is to make voting like Maine has it. In nearly all of the states, all of the electoral votes go to the canidate that won the popular vote in that state. Let's say in CA a candidate won by a couple of votes. The winner would get all 52 votes while the person that barely lost would get nothing. Maine splits the state up and the winner of the popular vote in each area gets the single electoral vote for that area. In many states there is a big difference in how different areas vote.

It would make it sooo much easier to contest a single areas count then an entire state. An area the size of a county.