Election Day 2016, A National Holiday?

[xoxoxoBruce]

There has been a push to make Presidential Election Day 2016, a national holiday. Bernie Sanders has already introduced a bill to do that. Not surprisingly, the movement has also caught fire on Twitter, with an online petition asking Obama to make it so.

On the last national holiday what did you do? Go to the movies, a restaurant, shopping? How did those businesses operate if everyone had the day off? I guess a national holiday doesn't give "everyone" the day off. Most of the employees in those businesses are lower income people this movement is supposed to help.

But America today is a different landscape for workers—in a culture where Americans get little time off, whether it’s to vote or do anything else. Forty-two percent of Americans didn’t take a single vacation day last year, partially because they felt too economically insecure to afford it and partially because many of their employers actively discouraged them from doing so. Meanwhile, 23 percent of American workers did not receive paid vacation time, 24 percent did not receive paid holidays, and nearly 40 percent did not receive paid sick leave.

The polls are open from early to late, damn few can't make it with a little effort.

As a result, a Caltech/MIT survey on voting patterns discovered that three of the five most common reasons given by eligible adults who did not vote had an economic component to them: they were too busy, they struggled with transportation, or they faced registration problems.

I suspect they were giving socially acceptable reasons, or ones that conformed to the check boxes in the poll. They didn't want to say they went to their fuck garden and the rabbits had eaten them all. That's the answer I hear most often, along with, Why bother, it's rigged, Big Money has already bought the election, or They're all crooks anyway.

The U.S. Census found that only 47 percent of eligible adults with family incomes of less than $20,000 a year voted in the 2012 presidential election, compared to 80 percent of those whose earning exceeded $100,000. Overall, only 19 percent of likely voters come from families with incomes of less than $30,000 a year, even though that same group comprises 46 percent of nonvoters.

Similarly, because the poverty rate for Latinos and black Americans is almost three times that of whites, non-whites are disproportionately likely to not vote; although these groups comprise only 22 percent of likely voters, they make up 43 percent of non-voters.

That makes sense, who would be more discouraged about the system, and less likely to keep rabbits out of their fuck garden, than the poor.

As teeth grinding as the Citizens United fiasco, and secret Super Pacs are to me, I really wonder if it makes that big a difference. I guess it does in that by financing campaigns they're buying politicians loyalty, but I'm skeptical about voter influence of those campaigns. After all, the election is a year away and 95% of voters have already made up their minds.