Thursday, January 31, 2019

Second Thoughts: Election Day as Holiday?

I appreciate the sentiment behind Election Day As Holiday. But that alone won't fix everything - it may not even be the best way to fix things. We also need to carefully consider all the unintended consequences, especially to child care and public transit.

Think it all the way through. What if your kid's school and the bus line closes on Election Day Holiday and your job does not? Then you're in worse shape than you would be on a normal working weekday. And there's likely to be a serious class division as to who actually gets the holiday.

Public safety doesn't close. Hospitals don't close. Radio stations don't close (my main experience in working holidays). And increasingly, unfortunately, retail doesn't close.

I am privileged enough, thanks to my union, that I got a nice four days off, two with pay and two weekend days, at Christmas. But that was 21 through 25 and I had to work on the 26th, so my schedule had me driving home through rural parts of Wisconsin and Iowa on Christmas morning.

Nearly every gas station was open. If they make you work on CHRISTMAS, do you think you're getting Election Day off?

We need to stop thinking of Election "Day" and think in terms of Election Season. A nationwide extended early voting period like Iowa has, including nights and weekends and satellite locations other than government offices, would do more good than a single day holiday.

Personally, rather than a holiday, I'd like to see us do what most other Western democracies do: vote on Sunday. But most countries are more secular, and zero odds that churches will accept it.

One way I think an Election Day holiday would help: freeing up a pool of people to serve as pollworkers. If the schools close, that also addresses school security concerns (which I think are overblown, but I hear them)

But what we lose with closed schools: Kids seeing grownups vote and learning the behavior, and voters who may not have students seeing the schools.

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