A Modest Wage-Hour Proposal: A Paid Day Off for Democracy
“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Voting – it is as American as baseball and apple pie.
This year’s election is predicted to be one of the most divisive in recent memory. Before even the start of Election Day, nearly 100,000,000 citizens had already voted, whether absentee (mail in or drop box) or in early voting. That was already as much as about 2/3rds of the total voters in the 2016 Presidential Election according to the U.S. Elections Project. After many voters decided to cast mail in ballots because of long lines at their county polling place, the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the issue of after election day vote counting by a 4-4 vote with the newest Justice Amy Coney Barrett abstaining from the ruling. This effectively allowed both the State Board of Elections in Pennsylvania and North Carolina to count votes received up to 3 days in Pennsylvania and 9 days in North Carolina after election day. Having said that, it seems that in person voting during the contentious litigation surrounding vote counting as well as the possibility of voting delay may make in-person voting more attractive in future elections.
Title 3 of the US Code deals with the elections of the President and the Vice President. It states that the electors will be chosen every four years by the states on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It also says that the states may enact laws prior to this date that concern the counting of votes and the manner in which they are cast. Many states have used these laws to allow for early voting, absentee ballots, and mail-in voting to give each voter a better chance to vote. In addition, according to Business Insider, 30 states protect in person voting by requiring employers to provide paid time off (PTO) to their employees. California even requires a notice to be placed in the workplace much like Federal Minimum Wage Laws. Some states condition PTO on whether the employee’s shift allows them time to go to the polls after or before their shift. This may not be an appropriate amount of time if they live far away from the polling place or if the lines are long.
A more effective option would be to declare a state or federal holiday that allows each person the time off to vote. Originally, in rural small town America in the 1800’s, Election Day was an informal holiday, celebrated by drinking cider and voting. It is time to return to that original democratic (with a small “D”) intent. A poll in 2018 suggests that the vast majority of Americans, 71% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans, would support the idea when given the chance. Pew Research Center, Weekday Elections Set the U.S. Apart from Many Other Advanced Democracies, 2018 at pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/06/weekday-elections-set-the-u-s-apart-from-many-other-advanced-democracies/.
The statistics support that work is one of the largest structural impediments to voting, particularly if the lines are long and the time investiture is great. In 2016, the demographic with the highest percentage of participants in the presidential election was the age group of 65 and older, followed by the 45 – 64 year old demographic. U.S. Census Bureau, Voting in America: A Look at the 2016 Presidential Election, 2017 at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2017/05/voting_in_america.html. Consequently, those age groups tend to be least represented in the workforce other than the 20-24-year-old demographic. See U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, 2016 at https://www.bls.gov/cps/aa2016/cpsaat11b.htm. This suggests that those who do not work are best able to make it to the polls and that is reflected in the polling numbers. While these variables are merely correlative and could be explained by the difference in life experience it is at least one justification. However, the Washington Post wrote an article exhibiting research by the Pew Research Center that showed that 35% of people who were surveyed did not participate in midterm elections because of work or school conflicts.
Declaring Election Day a national holiday isn’t exactly a novel idea with legislators such as Bernie Sanders advocating to declare the Tuesday following the first Monday in November as “Democracy Day”. While the 2020 Presidential election may be the most participated U.S. election in recent memory, more can always be done to remove the obstacles faced by each voter. Accordingly, we make a modest proposal that Election Day be made a mandatory paid holiday with guaranteed time off to vote. Let’s tip a glass of cider to a new Democracy Day holiday!