Meaningful national value in a holiday for election day imo

My big stupid idea for American politics is for a president to promise that each budget they sign will add a new holiday. Make Congress come up with one, agree on it. I think super bowl Monday, election day, and a doubled memorial day are the most obvious, best candidates

Here is your bill. Good luck.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/11/t...

The fact that election day is not a mandatory holiday blows my mind.

It underscores that the US is Capitalism first and Democracy.. somewhere much further down the list.

It's a political problem as some parties find it makes themselves more electable when less people vote.

Washington state makes it so easy. My ballot is mailed to me weeks before the election date. I have plenty of time to research and fill it out. I then drop it off at one of the many official dropboxes around the city (or you can drop it in the mail for free, as long as you get it postmarked before the election date). The ballot is tracked from the time it's sent, received, and counted (I have mine set to alert me of its status via email and SMS).

I have a similar experience in CA. It's become a joy to sit down for an afternoon with a glass of wine, researching all the down ballot races as I fill in bubbles.

I believe this is the case in some countries, Cambodia being one if I recall correctly.

I remember being there during an election, in theory none of the bars/pubs were meant to open because they didn't want people just taking the day off to get drunk. However being in a tourist spot, the bars who served the foreign travellers were open... just everyone was drinking their beer out or mugs.

Apparently this was sufficiently respecting the spirit of the law for business to continue as usual.

Election workers would have the day off too.

If the point of having Election Day off is to give folks time to vote, poll workers are already, well, at the polls. Naturally, they will be able to vote.

I think he thinks that the election workers work at the polls full time as their career and thus wouldnt work on election day and we would have no election. Kinda funny but not how any of it works.

Aren't poll workers entitled to national holidays off?

If this is the biggest reason you can think of why this won’t work, pretty sure we can figure this out. We seem to have figured it out for police and firefighters. Unless you think all the cops take off for Christmas Day or something?

Because it's intentional. Can't have poor people voting in mass.

Election Day holiday wouldn't change that. Poor people work on holidays. Making election day a holiday would change little. Longer voting periods, absentee ballots for everyone like in COVID, these are things that would help.

Hey at least they’d get paid holiday overtime in that case!

I never got 'overtime' when working on holidays during all my time in food service.

A flaw in this theory is that poor people who have jobs often times still have to go to work on federal holidays because of where they work - retail and service jobs for example.

Hell, in Georgia you can't even give poor people water when they are in a long line to vote.

Not kidding: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/politics/georgia-voting-law-f...

That was so shitty it's unbelievable.

The law prohibits "gifts" and giving items out for free.

Republicans hate free shit and are all about commerce though. Selling the same items for $0.01 a pop does not appear to be illegal. Set up a "ghost kitchen" out of a car parked around the corner and pretend you're a DoorDasher.

We had elections in NZ a few months ago. The in-person voting period ran for at least a week. Some voting booths only opened on the actual election day, but a good number were open for longer. Most malls I went to had them open the entire time, same with a voting booth in the airport departures lounge.

This can also be seen as incentivizing critical workers (election workers) to find a different job.

Huh, what mandatory holiday gains. The better thing would be if anyone want to take a day off for election day company can't refuse it.

> It underscores that the US is Capitalism first and Democracy..

In my first hand experience US democracy is working much better that places which have mandatory holiday for election.

It really has nothing to do with Democracy or Capitalism. It has everything to do with suppressing the votes of certain demographics.

Since the US has been voting on the first Tuesday in November without a federal holiday longer than Blacks and Women could legally vote, I do not understand why you would think this

Farcical first past the post non-democratic election system without IDs is even more mind blowing from the other side of the pond.

I think it works better as is. Just 16 million people collectively deciding that are too hung over to go to work. It's a like a mini-strike by the core alcohol consumers. What is their one demand? This day off. Do they get it? Yes.

I get what you're getting at but the idea that you're allowing people not to work because they're getting shit-faced the day prior while watching a football game sounds like the wrong path to take for society. And I say this as a die-hard Chiefs fan for close to 15 years lol

Society should have celebrations. It's good for social cohesion that people do things together and have shared interests and activities. One of the consequences of celebrations is hangovers. We should make it easy for people to have celebrations, and that includes them having some hangovers, or just being tired from being up later the night before.

I don't drink or care about football, I just think new year's day and black Friday are good holidays.

Or just always have the superbowl on the Sunday before President's day. No new holiday required.

I just made the same comment. The expansion of the season now allows for that.

More days off is better though.

Two sequential 4 day work weeks is a waste though. I would much prefer to have them more evenly spread out. Summertime is great starting with Memorial Day in June, 4th of July, then Labor Day. The Spring has room for something since there's really nothing between Pres. Day and Memorial Day with a two month gap

I disagree. I find that the extra week before the Super Bowl makes me less interested in the season as a whole and less excited for the game when my team is not in it.

I think January 2nd should be a holiday

Or move it to Saturday.

Give us the weekend to get it largely out of our systems.

People would still want to talk about it on the first day of work with their work buddies

The true football nuts will have a chat to talk about it during the game and on the Sunday after. I also think they should put it on Saturday, but they spent so much time make "Super Bowl Sunday" a thing that people think there is some religious thing about it being on Sunday.

Well, in the New Orleans area at least, plenty of people were getting Monday off anyway because of Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras.

I think (federal) holidays should be reserved for largely non-secular, non-corporate events/times that ideally have significant historical or cultural impact on our country. Juneteenth is an example of this, imo.

I think adding the day after the super bowl would be kind of weird due to its inherently corporate ties, but to each their own. It would be more natural if it were before presidents day monday.