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Service workers work on both of those days, so the working class lose either way.
In most civilized countries, voting takes place on weekends and your employer is legally obligated to let you leave work to go vote
Some places give you a whole week to vote, and the polls are open 12 hours a day. So if you something happens and your plans are ruined, you have ample time to still make it to the polls.
Employees have to let you leave to vote.
They can also fire you the next day for a coincidentally unrelated reason, and unless you have 50k in lawyers retainers handy there’s not shit you can do about it
If only there existed, like, a club for workers where everyone pays a membership fee to cover each other’s legal costs and protect each other’s rights. We could call it a “togetherness” or something like that
If only…
Depends on the state. In MN state law allows you take as much time as necessary to go vote with pay. I can’t remember when this was passed but I’m going to “Thanks Walz” anyways.
That’s not true.
In most states, employers don’t need any reason at all to fire you.
“At will” employment, woohoo!
We don’t get the day off to vote in MN but you are legally allowed to take time off to go vote (with pay). So when I was in the office, I always voted in the middle of the day right after my lunch hour.
Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I’ve ever gotten from any boss before. I’m sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it’s never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would’ve talked shit if I said that’s what I wanted to do with my time.
I mean in my state I now have like 8 election days off.
And why is presidents day called Washington’s birthday?
Fred Astaire would explain it to you, but he can’t tell a lie.
Because originally the holiday just celebrated the first US president, George Washington and then they consolidated into Presidents Day so they didn’t have plethora of Dead President Birthday holidays.
We had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday both as holidays when I was a kid. Lincoln was born in November, so it wasn’t a perfect balance with February, but it was close enough to one.
Yeah and I think they collapsed into president’s day to avoid adding a day for Kennedy.
That would make sense.
Wait, you guys are getting President’s Day off work??
Maybe OP works at an elementary school 40 years ago.
Though somehow there’s usually a mattress sale.
I’ve been getting it off for years. I know teachers do too, but I’m not a teacher.
Or a bank. Are banks ever actually open?
Is there ever not a mattress sale? And they advertise like crazy.
Yes. Quite stupidly
Yeah, making election day a national holiday doesn’t help those of us who don’t get most holidays off.
Right. Congress would need to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to mandate that employers give national holidays off to employees for this to apply to everyone.
Protesting for fair rest days has taken a back seat to letting women marry women and also ensuring women don’t fucking die around childbirth or complications getting there, which seem to be very pressing and fundamental issues we seem to have lost value in solving. Also, issues like black slavery and prisoner slavery and women’s slavery and rapists choosing their kids’ mom’s and something about the overwhelming prevalence of fucking boomsticks in every part of that and everything else, like schools.
It’s like there’s a million mind-numbingly simple things we should have solved trivially with an “of course I’m not a dick” vote that we seem to have stalled on or went backward about, and these are pushing the more nuanced class war issues onto the back back back burner pending their resolution.
Fuck this exhausting shit and the effort to just keep a country going where people are dying and blaming Biden for it. Secede from those richbitch fuckwits and their hillbilly fan base. When all their people are dying and dead, buy the land to settle the debt and then reunify better. We don’t tolerate intolerance, and maybe that means we can’t save this version of the matri-uh, union, and maybe we need to start working on the next.
Maybe it needs to super-national?
This was my thought as well. Too many years of retail has left me with an instinctual hatred for holidays. Like how Labor Day is a holiday for the rich to “celebrate” the working poor who have to work that day.
The poor and desperate will vote less under the current conditions. It is all baked into the US cake. Wait until you realize that the US never passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Still waiting on those bastard laggard states to ratify it for nearly 50 years.
In France elections are held on a Sunday so most people don’t work, the others are allowed time off to vote of course
Well in the US, no one was originally intended to vote but the male landed gentry, who clearly could afford to travel for several days to their polling place, get plastered on local liquor, and just shout who they were voting for at whomever was supposed to jot that down. Them that person would go off and vote for whoever they wanted, in case the peasants had gotten any silly ideas and voted for the wrong guy.
I think what you just described is the electoral college
Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
Because President’s Day is for buying stuff. Clearly what we need is to allow stores to set up in polling places to get it to be a holiday. /s
We should just have elections on presidents day.
And that way presidents day finally has an actual purpose.
I’d feel weird voting for other stuff on a day called presidents Day now. Maybe we should add more days. Like governors day and mayors day. Oh and county comptroller day!!! We should have cookouts on that day also, obviously.
Yeah but then how would we celebrate Director of Parks and Recreation day?
It has a purpose…that’s when we have big sales at the car dealerships. Just as George Washington always wanted.
How would people have time to get more car-poor if they had to stop shopping to do something silly like vote for the leader of the free world?
I had a job for a few years with no MLK and no President’s day. That stretch from New Years to Memorial Day was very, very long.
Why is it election day anyway, why not election month. California and Oregon have vote by mail; every state should
Early voting near me started last week, I made time this monday, wasn’t even a line when I got there. Early voting all this week from 7am-7pm. Why chance a long line on election day.
Washington State too. You’re right, the election isn’t just a day anymore - I voted more than a week ago.
The west coast, Vermont, and DC have all been mail voting for a long time. Hell, even Utah is via mail.
We don’t get either of them off. Or weekends.
We shouldn’t specifically have Election Day off work. Everyone should get one paid day off in the period of early voting or election day. It’ll prevent the hours-long wait times at the polls on election day and allow businesses to stay in operation by spreading out the time when workers are off to vote.
I’d prefer it even more if the money for the vacation time were paid by the government, but only of the person actually votes. Otherwise, you’ll just find a bunch of cruise specials around election season meant to capitalize on the extra vacation time, and voter turnout won’t be significantly impacted.
this scheme has no incentive to actually vote. It would likely help many people in voting, but a lot would just go fishing or stay home to play games. I’m not saying make it a crime to not vote.
tax incentives to vote sounds like a giveaway to tax-prep companies and tax-software companies, none of whom should exist at all.
and all of this when the whole voting structure is fucked – first-past-the-post is when one candidate gets more than another, even if they get a small minority of votes.
Did you not read the part where I said the incentive requires them to vote?
we agree more voting is better.
