Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
"We"? Who are "we"? Star fleet?
People have to remember that this is the Internet, this thing is global.
Because corporations own you and this means they can pressure how you vote in key states.
We don't get the day off to vote in MN but you are legally allowed to take time off to go vote (with pay). So when I was in the office, I always voted in the middle of the day right after my lunch hour.
Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I've ever gotten from any boss before. I'm sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it's never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would've talked shit if I said that's what I wanted to do with my time.
Early voting is a better solution to the problem than making it a day off, though.
I had a job for a few years with no MLK and no President's day. That stretch from New Years to Memorial Day was very, very long.
Meanwhile all the schools in my area are polling places so kids don't have school.
Forcing many parents to take the day off anyway, but unpaid (or using PTO time, if they have it).
Working as intended. Make voting as difficult and distasteful as possible so we can welcome fascism with big warm hugs. Finally, no more of that voting nonsense.
In most civilized countries, voting takes place on weekends and your employer is legally obligated to let you leave work to go vote
Employees have to let you leave to vote.
They can also fire you the next day for a coincidentally unrelated reason, and unless you have 50k in lawyers retainers handy there’s not shit you can do about it
That's not true.
In most states, employers don't need any reason at all to fire you.
“At will” employment, woohoo!
Depends on the state. In MN state law allows you take as much time as necessary to go vote with pay. I can't remember when this was passed but I'm going to "Thanks Walz" anyways.
Some places give you a whole week to vote, and the polls are open 12 hours a day. So if you something happens and your plans are ruined, you have ample time to still make it to the polls.
And why is presidents day called Washington's birthday?
Because originally the holiday just celebrated the first US president, George Washington and then they consolidated into Presidents Day so they didn't have plethora of Dead President Birthday holidays.
We had Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday both as holidays when I was a kid. Lincoln was born in November, so it wasn't a perfect balance with February, but it was close enough to one.
Yeah and I think they collapsed into president's day to avoid adding a day for Kennedy.
That would make sense.
Because they don't want the workers voting.
If you "can't go to the ballot because you need to work" you are a plebeian, and so they have a way of excluding you while technically not excluding you.
A lot of modern oligarchy is powered by these technicalities. Technically everyone has a "right to" participate in the system, but the whole apparatus is rigged in such a way that in material reality only the same nobility caste that has called the shots since the bronze fucking age gets to call the shots.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
By law employers are required to allow their workers an opportunity to vote. The problem is other stuff like taking their kids to school and having to go to work right after and by the time you make it to the poll through rush hour traffic, the line is out the door and they shut it down and don’t let you vote even though you waited for an hour.
I'm so glad my state has mail-in voting. Sorry buddy.
My roommate asked for time off to vote; her employer literally laughed at her. Now, there is legal recourse there, and she would have likely won and even gotten awarded a money judgment.
But she needed that job without interruption. This was in Canada, by the way.
So the bare minimum that even my little Eastern European hellhole could do was that a polling place closing means that those in line can still vote.
A poll worker gets in line exactly at closing time, and those in front get to vote however long that takes. It's not hard to organize.
Yeah, it's exactly the same in the very opposite end of Europe (and about as poor) - Portugal - which I know becaused I maned the polling places a couple of times and read the rule book.
Thanks for your service, unironically
Dudes working at most hourly lower end type jobs still wouldn't get election day off, unless you mandated like octuple pay for anyone working that day (They should)
We should just have elections on presidents day.
And that way presidents day finally has an actual purpose.
It has a purpose...that's when we have big sales at the car dealerships. Just as George Washington always wanted.
How would people have time to get more car-poor if they had to stop shopping to do something silly like vote for the leader of the free world?
You are getting President's Day off?
Sure, here you go: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7329
One of many such bills.
Take a look at the sponsors. I'll give you 1 guess at which party would vote it down, because it would hurt them in elections.
It's the same reason Puerto Rico will never be a state.
In France elections are held on a Sunday so most people don't work, the others are allowed time off to vote of course
Well in the US, no one was originally intended to vote but the male landed gentry, who clearly could afford to travel for several days to their polling place, get plastered on local liquor, and just shout who they were voting for at whomever was supposed to jot that down. Them that person would go off and vote for whoever they wanted, in case the peasants had gotten any silly ideas and voted for the wrong guy.
I think what you just described is the electoral college
Because Republicans don’t want you to vote if you have the kind of job that you can’t just take whatever time you want off.
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