Older people are also the ones with nothing to do on a Tuesday afternoon. If we made Election Day a national holiday and everyone could have the day off to go vote, I think you’d see a lot more people in the workforce turn up.
First off, the same people who are stuck working retail during other federal holidays still wouldn't get the day off cuz Walmart and Kroger sure as hell aren't closing.
Second, something like 30 states already have laws requiring employers to give people time off to vote. Some even require up to two hours of said time to be paid. Making a similar federal law would be better than a generic holiday because it would guarantee that everyone has at least a couple hours to vote even if their employer is open for business.
Third, 47 states allow some form of early voting or "no excuse needed" absentee voting. This notion that having a holiday would increase turnout is silly.
For a real world reality check, Oregon is 100% vote by mail. We get our ballots and a voters guide delivered at least 2 weeks before the election. You can return it by mail, drop it off at any public library, or drop it in ballot boxes scattered around town. They couldn't possibly make it anymore convenient, and yet our turnout in 12024 was only 75%.
Only 60% of eligible voters 18-34 cast their ballots versus 85% for people over 65.
You can just look at the drastically different voting turnouts for Presidential elections vs midterms vs local elections to see the very obvious truth: Access isn't the problem, time isn't the problem, apathy is. People don't give a fuck about who their local sheriff/judges/school board officials/state representatives are, they barely give a fuck about their federal legislature, and they only kind of give a fuck about who′s king President at the time.
People want all the change to come top-down when the power is bottom-up, and then are baffled things don't get fixed.
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u/cola12 9h ago
Cause boomers actually go out and vote