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For turnout, make a national holiday of it

By GREG HAMILTON
Published November 7, 2006

Today is Election Day. It should also be, in my humble opinion, a national holiday.

We hear all the time about the embarrassing low voter turnout numbers around the country, so it should be a no-brainer that we make it easier for people to get to the polls.

Like by not making them choose between voting or getting fired for missing work.

In retiree-dominated communities like Citrus County, this is not such a huge issue. For many of our residents, every day is Saturday and it is not a hardship to vote.

But that is not the case across the United States. And even here, there are thousands of younger workers who can't break away from the construction site or the restaurant to vote.

That's where relatively recent innovations such as early voting and relaxed rules on absentee ballots are supposed to help, and they have, but not nearly enough. Making Election Day more special than it already is would be a great improvement.

This is not an original concept, by the way. There have been several attempts over the years to designate Election Day a federal holiday, but they have failed to gain traction largely because of resistance from the business community (days off mean fewer profits, after all).

In 2001, the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, recommended merging Election Day and Veterans Day into one super holiday. That raised a ruckus among some veterans groups that did not want to see their special day co-mingled with another holiday.

But the idea should not be so easily tossed aside.

Besides making it easier for working men and women to get to the polls, it would also help what some experts say is the larger drag on voter turnout: Apathy.

People young and old, frustrated by politicians of all stripes and at all levels, increasingly are seeing little reason to vote. We all have heard the laments, "Why bother? They're all crooks."

Imagine, though, if the nation treated Election Day with even a portion of the anticipation that we shower on the Super Bowl. Or even the Fourth of July.

Imagine if parents explained to their youngsters that voting is so important that just about everything in the country stops on this special day as we choose our leaders.

Imagine if communities made Election Day a festive event, whipping up patriotism and national pride, rather than what it has become, the culmination of exhausting seasons of mean-spirited and disgusting attacks among politicians.

People just might wish to take part in this experiment called democracy instead of avoiding it like an alley fight between a bunch of thugs.

A lot of common-sense thought went into the original designation of Election Day, reflecting the realities of the times and the lives of the voters.

In 1845, Congress designated Election Day to be the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. November was picked because the crops would be harvested by then (a nod to the constraints of the working world). The first Tuesday after the first Monday aimed to keep the day from falling on Nov. 1, which is All Saints Day, a religious holiday. Tuesday also gave people an extra day to get from the countryside to the polls (people could not travel on Sundays because of church obligations).

Some states already have declared Election Day a legal holiday: Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

It is also a legal holiday in presidential election years in Puerto Rico where, in 2000, voter turnout was 83 percent. In the rest of the United States, it was 52 percent.

In fact, turnout in the United States is dismal at best. In 2004, one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in the modern era, only 55 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. And that was a banner year. Countries such as Italy, Australia, Germany, Denmark and Sweden routinely hit 80 percent or higher.

Even in Citrus, where we have thousands of retirees plus early voting and absentee ballots, voter turnout today is only expected to be around 60 percent.

A Census Bureau survey after the 2000 elections cited schedule conflicts with work or school as the No. 1 reason respondents gave for not voting. Americans should never have to decide between standing in line at a crowded precinct or getting fired from their jobs.

Some opponents of making Election Day a holiday say that it would become like Memorial Day, Veterans Day or the Fourth of July, just another reason to go golfing or barbecuing. It would soon lose its patriotic meaning.

Also, they point out that the polls in most states open early and stay open until 7 or 9 p.m., time enough for most workers to vote. Banks close around 4 or 5 p.m. and people manage to get there. If it were important, they would figure out how to vote, too.

That is true, but why should Americans make it tough on themselves? Why not insist that the government that we the people (on paper at least) still control make voting an event at least as special as Columbus Day?

Celebrating Election Day could go a long way toward bringing this polarized populace back together again.

[Last modified November 7, 2006, 06:24:38]