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Voting Holiday On Election Day? President Obama Endorses The Notion

By Ayush Adhikari
Published on: 21:41 PST, May 12, 2016

Americans who do not turn out to vote on the voting day do have an excuse at the moment. They can easily reason being at work for not being able to vote for their favored candidate.

Election day is not a holiday in the United States at the moment. This means voters will have to plan the day and make time out of their busy working schedules. This means voters have a tough task to manage their work schedule, family duties, and commuting to figure out when they can vote.

Election Day in the United States is the day set by law for the general elections of public officials. It occurs on the Tuesday right after the first Monday in November. This means that there is no available holiday on the election day.

According to WhyTuesday, Census data shows that the primary reason Americans don’t vote is that it’s inconvenient to do so. Between work, family responsibilities, and commuting traffic, it’s no wonder turnout is so low – and then those that do go vote before work, after work, or at lunch have to deal with long lines.

WhyTuesday also supports the idea that, if Election Day is made a federal holiday like Columbus Day, Presidents’ Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, or if the day of voting was scheduled on the weekend for convenience, it would give voters a day off and help to increase the public turn around for voting.

It seems like President Obama is also in favor of the notion. In a recent interview with The Daily Targum, Obama talked about several issues and went on to endorse the idea of having a federal holiday in election day, Slate reported.

Below is an excerpt of the full interview wherein they talk about the idea of election holiday.

THE TARGUM: You have pointed out many times that voter turnout in the United States is very low, especially compared to other developed nations. But in many other countries, the government automatically registers voters and holds elections on days that are weekend days or national holidays. Do you think it’s time for the U.S. to follow their lead?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely. We are the only advanced democracy that makes it deliberately difficult for people to vote. And some of it has to do with the nature of our history and our Constitution, where we allow individual states to determine their own processes for structuring elections within certain boundaries.

I think that we know some states like Oregon are doing a much better job at extending mail-in voting, increasing tools like online voting that are safe and secure, give people flexibility over a long period of time, (and) early voting. And so everything we can do to make sure that we’re increasing participation is something that we should promote and encourage. Our democracy is not going to function well when only half or a third of eligible voters are participating.

The single most dramatic political change that could occur in this country—and the best way for us to relieve the frustrations that people feel around the political process—would be if we had greater participation that was more reflective of the day-to-day concerns that people have.

Obama has always been in favor of increasing the public turn around for voting. He also suggested the idea of mandatory voting. The statement from Obama comes in liaison with the idea of Bernie Sanders, who introduced an election holiday bill in 2015,

Sanders believes that Democrats and progressives win when the voting turnout is high, while the republicans win when the voting turn around is low.

Slate also reported that this notion is likely to be looked at with cold eyes by the Republicans.

It [Election Day] would make it easier for people with inflexible work schedules to vote, which means more working-class and lower-income voters, which means more votes for Democrats, Michael Grunwald of Slate wrote.

[Photo by Pool/Getty Images]

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