Voting on Tuesday: another form of institutional discrimination
by David Atkins
Earlier today I brought up the insitutitionally sanctioned discrimination of allowing Wyoming to have two Senators, but the District of Columbia to have none. Changing that would require giving Washington, D.C. the right to vote; solving the more general problem of unequal Senatorial representation would require changing the Constitution.
But there is another form of institutional discrimination in government that would only need a simple legislative fix: voting on Tuesday.
Voting on Tuesday isn’t mandated by the Constitution. It’s a mid-19th century law designed for a time when it could take days to travel to the polling station. Seriously:
The problem with voting on a Tuesday (usually in November) is that people work for a living, and getting to the polls on a (usually cold November) workday is a pain. People working more than one job can’t take the time at all.
It’s true that mail-in voting is helping to change this, but most people still vote at a polling booth and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Poor and working class Americans are least likely to be aware that they have the right to vote by mail (where it even exists), and least likely to be able to take time off on a Tuesday to come vote.
Changing election day to a weekend would be helpful–though these days a great many people work on weekends regardless. Making election day a national holiday and requiring employers to give their employees at least 2 hours off to vote would be far better. It would allow everyone to more equitably have their voices heard. It would be patriotic, too.
But that’s why the plutocrats will desperately try to stop it from happening.
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