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In reply to the discussion: Following Sanders' Lead, Obama Endorses National Voting Holiday [View all]0rganism
(23,945 posts)by that reasoning, should we just scrap national holidays altogether? never mind that the clerk who has to work a national holiday at least gets overtime pay (i got triple pay for holiday work back when i worked retail) and at least benefits from that.
the advance voting idea is a good one, but as you may have noticed, "a lot of states will balk" at having extended advance voting (or have a tendency to revoke the advance voting they already had in place), just as they seek to increase voter ID laws rather than rolling them back. this situation is a result of the asinine owning-class-favoring system we have in place now. i think we'd find making election day a national holiday at the federal level will put an incredible amount of pressure on state legislatures not to stand in the way of either the holiday or (more importantly) the voting itself.
in Oregon, we have vote-by-mail, so we get our ballots a few weeks in advance but we had to bust ass with a Republican-opposed ballot measure to get it, and it doesn't do a damn thing to help the people of Idaho or Nevada. addressing this at a federal level with a national voting holiday will help nearly everyone, and taking 1 single November Tuesday off is a small price to pay for the benefits.