A majority of Washington voters support making General Election Day a federal holiday

Today is Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day 2022… the dead­line to return bal­lots in the one hun­dred and eigh­teenth gen­er­al elec­tion to be held for Con­gress in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Despite its impor­tance to the the coun­try’s repub­li­can sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, it is not a fed­er­al hol­i­day like Thanks­giv­ing, Memo­r­i­al Day, Labor Day, or Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day are.

Our research has found that a major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers think it should be, how­ev­er. In our most recent statewide poll, con­duct­ed last month by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI, 56% of like­ly 2022 vot­ers sur­veyed said they sup­port­ed mak­ing Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day, while 27% were opposed. 16% were not sure.

45% of those sur­veyed were strong­ly sup­port­ive, indi­cat­ing sig­nif­i­cant enthu­si­asm for the idea, which has been dis­cussed and debat­ed over the years but not act­ed upon by Con­gress. The most recent fed­er­al hol­i­day to be added to the nation’s cal­en­dar is June­teenth, which has long been cel­e­brat­ed at the local and state lev­els, but was not a fed­er­al hol­i­day. That changed last year thanks to the June­teenth Nation­al Inde­pen­dence Day Act signed by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Here’s the text of the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose mak­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day in even-num­bered years a fed­er­al holiday?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 56% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 45%
  • Some­what sup­port: 11%
• Oppose: 27%
  • Some­what oppose: 9%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 18%
• Not sure: 16%

Our sur­vey of 782 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State midterm vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Octo­ber 19th through Thurs­day, Octo­ber 20th. The sur­vey was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

Inter­est­ing­ly, mak­ing Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day is one of the elec­toral reform con­cepts sup­port­ed by West Vir­gini­a’s mer­cu­r­ial Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Joe Manchin, who has frus­trat­ing­ly with­held his sup­port for oth­er ideas for strength­en­ing our democ­ra­cy that his Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues back.

Pro­po­nents of mak­ing Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day believe it would allow more Amer­i­cans to ded­i­cate time to vot­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in civic life. If it were a paid fed­er­al hol­i­day, it would enable the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment (one of the coun­try’s largest employ­ers) to set a good exam­ple for pri­vate employ­ers to fol­low, though the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice’s work­force would still need to come into work in order to ensure returned bal­lots could be processed through the postal system.

Brook­ings is among the orga­ni­za­tions that sup­ports the idea.

“Many oth­er democ­ra­cies make elec­tion day a hol­i­day and they all have high­er vot­er turnout than we do,” William G. Gale and Dar­rell M. West wrote last year.
“For exam­ple, Aus­tralia typ­i­cal­ly has a turnout in the 90 per­cent or more range, and oth­er nations such as Argenti­na, Bel­gium, Brazil, Cos­ta Rica, and Mex­i­co achieve very high turnout via uni­ver­sal vot­ing and time off for voting.”

Gale and West sug­gest mov­ing Vet­er­ans Day to coin­cide with Elec­tion Day to avoid adding a new fed­er­al hol­i­day to the calendar.

“Veteran’s Day typ­i­cal­ly is about one week after Elec­tion Day so this would involve lit­tle dis­rup­tion in terms of job sched­ules and month­ly rou­tines. Fur­ther­more, mak­ing this small shift would cel­e­brate the pur­pose and sac­ri­fice of our fight­ing forces. After all, what do our vet­er­ans fight for, if not for democ­ra­cy itself?”

Joe McCarthy of Glob­al Cit­i­zen cites five rea­sons for adopt­ing the idea:

1. It would give peo­ple time to vote
2. It would serve as a cru­cial reminder to voters
3. It would let peo­ple carpool
4. It would allow more peo­ple to vol­un­teer dur­ing the day
5. It would turn vot­ing into a celebration

Many Amer­i­cans are appar­ent­ly unaware that Elec­tion Day is not a fed­er­al holiday.

A web search for “Make Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day” on Google and Bing yield­ed a num­ber of news arti­cles that pose and answer the ques­tion Is Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day? Like this one from USATo­day. Or this one from Teg­na. Or this one from NBC Chica­go. Or this one from Newsweek (dat­ing back to 2020).

Sev­er­al social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious busi­ness­es have been lead­ers in clos­ing or par­tial­ly clos­ing on Elec­tion Day so that their employ­ees can par­tic­i­pate in U.S. democ­ra­cy. REI delays the open­ing of its stores so employ­ees can go and vote. Patag­o­nia does­n’t open at all, pre­fer­ring to give employ­ees paid time off so they can serve as poll work­ers or par­tic­i­pate in campaigns.

It might sur­prise Wash­ing­to­ni­ans and Ore­go­ni­ans to learn that twen­ty-four states already pro­vide for paid time off to vote. That is near­ly half the country.

USATo­day pub­lished an arti­cle about it yes­ter­day, not­ing: “There are some stip­u­la­tions, such as giv­ing an advanced notice, when your shift is sched­uled in rela­tion to when polls are open and pro­vid­ing proof of vot­ing to an employ­er. Only a cer­tain amount of hours are paid to employees.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illi­nois, Indi­ana, Louisiana, Mary­land, Michi­gan, Mon­tana, New Jer­sey, New York, Rhode Island, Vir­ginia, West Vir­ginia observe Elec­tion Day as a legal hol­i­day and close most of their state offices.

That’s a total of thir­teen states that already have laws pro­vid­ing for Elec­tion Day as a hol­i­day, includ­ing one in the greater Pacif­ic North­west (Mon­tana).

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are not among the states that des­ig­nate Elec­tion Day as a hol­i­day and don’t pro­vide for paid time off. How­ev­er, on the oth­er side of the ledger, a nation­al study found that Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon were the eas­i­est states to vote in. Vot­ers here get three weeks in which to cast a bal­lot, and there are no schemes in place to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers like pho­to ID or sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­staffed and under-resourced polling places with mas­sive­ly long lines.

Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats have embraced mak­ing Elec­tion Day a fed­er­al hol­i­day and offered leg­is­la­tion to make it hap­pen, but Repub­li­cans have stub­born­ly refused to fol­low suit. They should recon­sid­er their knee jerk oppo­si­tion, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing their base’s increas­ing obses­sion with Elec­tion Day voting.

With today being Elec­tion Day, it’s impor­tant for Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers to remem­ber that bal­lots need to be returned to a drop box by 8 PM Pacif­ic Time or to a post office by the last out­go­ing col­lec­tion time.