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February 18, 2008
Midnight Movie: Can We Get Tuesday Off Too?
From Why Presidents’ Day? via Why Tuesday?
No, not tomorrow Tuesday... the first Tuesday of November, aka Election Day. Why Tuesday? Executive Director and local Los Angeles politico Jacob Soboroff reports from Queens, New York asking why can Presidents' Day, a federal holiday, be moved around for convenience, but Election Day remains a regular workday. Is it not that important?
LAist: If election reform successfully moved election day to a Saturday, what would that mean for American politics?
Jacob Soboroff: Honestly, hard to say. I saw a study that said voting on days of rest would make people more likely to vote. We did a poll that said 94% of voters wanted casting ballots to be as convenient as possible. But there's no silver election reform bullet. Just changing the day we vote isn't going to solve our participation problem. We have to ask questions about the way we vote too. I'm talking about issues like our voting machines and the electoral college.
Read more of our conversation with Soboroff here.
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I agree in general that it should be a holiday, but moving it to Saturday would have the unintentional affect of disenfranchising Orthodox and most Conservative (Masorti) Jews, because of the fact that they aren't permitted to, among other things, drive, write, or operate a computer on Shabbat. Instead, move it to Monday, give all hourly workers either the day off paid or 4 hours paid and salaried workers similar dispensation.
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Er, effect, rather. I'm tired.