YES YES YES!
Election Day should be a National Holiday!
Got an E-mail from Paul Hogarth of the Daily Kos asking me to sign a petition to the Prez urging him to make Election Day a National Holiday.
Forget signing online petitions — all you get out of that is your data mined.
But without a doubt, everyone who gets the word should call and then write your US Senators and your member of Congress and DEMAND that they publicly urge the president to get out his Executive Order Memo pad and proclaim that the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November is a National Holiday.
We need to call our Congressional leaders and DEMAND that they support legislation to make this a Purple Law Holiday. You OLD Kosites may remember the Blue Laws of your childhood. Days where it was illegal to conduct certain types of business on Sunday. Yep, it’s true America was once a land of Blue Laws prohibiting commercial activities on Sundays. There may still be a few left on the books. Try to buy a car from an auto dealer on a Sunday. Try buying booze on a Sunday. But that’s another rant for another day.
A National Holiday with legal safeguards to ensure that employees of commerce and industry weren’t “punished” for going to the polls and voting is a GOOD IDEA that we Americans need to try out.
There are ways to ensure that doctors and law enforcement and firemen and “emergency responders get a chance to go to the polls and vote. But the rest of us would have only one thing to do on Election Day: VOTE!.
OKay — So the regressives in the Gross Old Party (GOP), will most certainly want to limit this holiday exemption from work to Registered Voters ONLY — We can live with that. Those who aren’t registered can’t vote and they neither need nor deserve a HOLIDAY. But every registered should have the privilege of a Holiday from work (a paid day off) to go to the polls and cast their ballot. And if the Regressives want to impose some sort of fine on all those registered voters who cheated and took the day off without going to to their local precinct polling place — That’s OKay too. After all, the reason for the day off (with pay) is to VOTE. And cheaters should be punished.
So sign up to have your data mined… That’s OKay. But then do what needs to be done to make this Holiday happen. Call and then write you Senators and Congressperson and send a letter to the president.
Digital petitions are not even a dime a dozen, more like 2-cents for a bull bakers dozen. But calls and letters from constituents still count for something.