Just wondering...

Come on now krby, I'm not an Obama fanboi. Yes I supported him from the start, but go back and read up. I was never ridiculous about it.

Should be a holiday anyway so more people that work at different hours have a better opportunity to vote. Absentee and all that, but the easier you make it for everyone to vote the more individuals make it to the ballot box.

Agreed. It should be a holiday but not because of Obama. Either that or the whole country needs to switch to absentee ballots. No one should miss the opportunity to vote because they had to work that day and didn't have time to wait in line.

nobody does. there's a federal law that requires employers to give you 3 consecutive hours to vote on voting days. or something like that.

Just because that's the law doesn't mean that everyone knows they have that right. Or that all employers honor it.

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Hope is the new black.

Pretty sure there were voting lines that topped 3 hours this last time around so uhh... yea, great law. Not.

Not to mention the time it takes to drive around, depending on which city you live in, get to and from work, how far you have to go, etc.

I can think of at least a dozen holidays we can scrap for this one of some importance.

took me like 9 minutes total to vote. i live in an expensive neighborhood that is less than a year old though, dunno how many people live around yet. guess i got lucky.

I know Surcam, was a horrible attempt at being funny.

They have made it so easy to vote now there should be no way to complain (but we are a country of cry-babies that would complain if the vote taker came to their front door at a prearranged time)

Early voting, absentee voting, electronic voting at the polling place, and on and on, it is so dumbed down that unless you are dead you don't have an excuse (well, that doesn't stop some people...)

A federal employer can allow a federal employee up to three hours of admin leave if and only if the employee would not be able to be at the polls by closing if they leave at their normal time.

Don't mind me man, I'm just hyper-sensitive about being grouped with the crazies.

I would be all for making November election days a holiday.

the law is that you are required to have 3 consecutive hours off to vote, but only if your work schedule would prohibit you from otherwise voting. which means if you work 7-7 on tuesday, then you have to have 3 hours off. if you work 8-5, you still have 2 hours to get there and aren't due any time off

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As long as they are in line in time, they get to vote, even if it runs past the closing time. So yes, it is a great law.

So that's 3 hours I assume right at the end of work? Because that would be just a little tricky if you were asked to vote BEFORE work, oops it went over 3 hours...

Because, you know, I'm sure all employers do it the exact same way and do it after work. Great law.

Bearne's point shouldn't really be ignored, either. It's highly unlikely that all employers either honor it, nor do all of them make sincere efforts to let everyone know they have that opportunity(especially since not all employees are going to know about it). Make it an official holiday? Pretty much everyone will know about it, and people will have ALL DAY to do it. Are you going to tell me that ZERO additional voters will find that just a bit more convenient and decide to vote? Heh.

And again, heaven forbid we take something like Columbus Day or whatever and make Nov. 4th a holiday instead. I'm sure the consequences are vast and far-reaching.

how many people actually get Columbus day off? Bankers, Brokers, Government workers, and the like... mostly white collar jobs. Even if you made it a National Holiday how many businesses would really be closed just to allow people to vote? Imagine how pissed you would be if you needed gas and all the gas stations were closed on election day. What we have now is fine. We have early voting, absentee voting, and actual voting at the polling place. The only "excuse" people have now is that they are lazy or just don't give a damn.

Sure not everyone would get the day off, that's not the point of the holiday. If you could equate it to something like Christmas, and more and more people managed to honor it, then it would be quite significant. The point is to give more convenience and opportunity to do it, especially if they live busy lifestyles. Add up all of those people you just mentioned working in banks, brokers, gov't workers, etc and that adds up to a rather large shitload of people, regardless of whether it's everyone or not.

What we have now will be "fine" when all employers follow the law and make it known to all of their employees, and actually become somewhat gungho about making sure it's respected.

The real question is what is "not fine" with having one holiday once every 2 years when we have innumerable holidays of immeasurably less importance. I understand that you think the situation is fine as it is, I'm glad you were able to speak for 300 million people and their situations, but the bottom line is that there are very few consequences for having such a holiday.

There's "just fine", and then there's "better".

I'm with krby (wtf). No need to fix what isn't broken.

Making a day a national holiday doesn't guarantee everyone will have off. Plenty of people work on the current holidays.

Also, if 3 hours isn't sufficient time to vote, then the process should be improved. Much more logical to focus on improving that.

Yep.

The Oregon method seems pretty sweet.

And I really like early voting (and dislike that we don't have it in MA). One of the advantages I see with early voting, in addition to convenience of picking when you vote, is the convenience of picking where you vote. In most places that have early voting, it runs in a limited number of locations, so you can vote anywhere in your voting district (town / city / county). I don't even know where my actual precinct location was in TX - I would always vote at the early voting location on campus or near work.

Additionally, early voting gives people the opportunity to find out ahead of election day if they are properly registered and have whatever ID is required by their state. So instead of filing a provisional ballot, people have a chance to fix their records and vote normally.

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Hope is the new black.

It's not as if we can only do one thing at once, I always found the "focus our attention on this issue first/instead" line to be a bit of a copout. By that logic we should only have Congress working on one bill per week, and nothing else(not even a preamble for a different bill!). Not that Congress is the most efficient entity in the world, but hopefully you get the idea about multi-tasking... or just the general idea that you can accomplish more than one thing in a day or a week.

Anyway, my point was not that it's broken. It's not. By and large it works for a good number of people(the vast majority, for sure) who are determined to go vote. It's *one more hassle-free thing* that we can do to ensure at least a few more people will go vote and make their opinions heard. Indeed if it ain't broke don't fix it, and this ain't broke! But it's like anything else we do in society to make things just a little bit better. By that rationale, we should all be settling for the least common denominator on each and every issue.

It just seems you guys are suggesting that we stop a couple feet from the finish line.

I have yet to hear one reason it should not be a holiday. Without any red herrings. And believe me I'm all ears =)

Should read:

Indeed if it ain't broke don't fix it, and this ain't broke and we ain't fixin' it!

There's nothing to "fix". There are improvements to be made.

Early voting has security concerns in my mind that I am not sure outweigh the convenience.

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securities markets are only closed like 10 days a year, but there are like twice as many bank and government holidays just fyi.

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I have concerns about early voting as well. One of the main issues was the probability of multiple voting; when I went to my polling place on election day I saw the voter roll had indicated when people had early voted which kept them from being able to get another ballot. Now, where I am they require you to go to the designated early voting location so they have one set of books. I don't know about the you can go to any location to vote, that screams fraud possibility to me.

In Bexar County, TX, it was computerized. There was a central voting database that the early voting locations connected to in order to determine if you had voted yet. You needed to either have your voter registration card with you, or provide ID.

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Hope is the new black.

Wisconsin doesnt require and ID currently if you are registered. It felt like I could have easily voted early the previous week and then again on election day. I decided against committing fraud, but it seemed to possible to ignore that it could easily happen.

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I imagine there must be some sort of voter roll though. If you voted early, that should be marked in the roll on election day.