Should Election Day be a federal holiday? Elizabeth Warren the latest Dem to support change

The push to make Election Day a federal holiday is gaining popularity with 2020 candidates.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday became the latest White House hopeful to announce her support for giving Americans Election Day off so they can be certain to have time to cast their ballots, an idea she’s floating as part of a $40 billion plan to bolster election security and voter participation. The Massachusetts senator joins two other candidates, Sen. Cory Booker and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who have previously called for creating a voting-day holiday.

“Our democracy shouldn’t be about keeping people out – it should strive to bring everyone to the polls,” Warren said in essay announcing her plan.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks during the South Carolina Democratic Convention, Saturday, June 22, 2019 in Columbia, S.C.. (Photo: Meg Kinnard, AP)

There’s no shortage of Americans who have scratched their heads about holding presidential elections on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, a more than 170-year-old tradition started to accommodate a more agrarian and church-going electorate.

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A U.S. Census survey of about 19 million registered voters who did not participate in the 2016 election found that 14.3%, or about 2.7 million people, said they were too busy to vote. And 65% of Americans (71% of Democrats and 59% of Republicans) said they support making Election Day a holiday, according to a October 2018 Pew Research Center survey.

Twenty-seven of the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development hold their national elections on the weekend, while two others, Israel and South Korea, hold elections on weekdays but make those days national holidays so economic hardship won’t be a barrier to electoral participation, according to Pew.

Election Day is a paid holiday in 13 states for state employees, with Kentucky state workers getting the day off in presidential-election years and New Mexico state workers being granted two hours of the work day to cast their ballots. New York and California state law specifies that workers can’t be docked any pay for taking time off to vote. More than three dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Washington that mail ballots to voters, and the District of Columbia allow citizens to vote ahead of Election Day. 

Not the first call for change

There have been previous pushes to make Election Day a holiday that have floundered.

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Most recently, in January, newly-empowered House Democrats introduced a bill to make Election Day a national holiday as part of a broad anti-corruption proposal.

The legislation also included calls to establish automatic voter registration, require presidential and vice-presidential candidates to release their tax returns, and force states to create independent redistricting commissions to help prevent gerrymandering of districts.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scuttled the bill, calling the push to make Election Day a federal holiday a “power grab” by Democrats.

“Just what America needs, another paid holiday and a bunch of government workers being paid to go out and work, I assume (with) our colleagues on the other side on their campaigns,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor. “This is the Democrat plan to restore Democracy?”

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) speaks to the crowd during the 2019 South Carolina Democratic Party State Convention on June 22, 2019 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo: Sean Rayford, Getty Images)

Booker in April was the first major 2020 candidate to call for an Election Day holiday as part of his proposal for a new and expanded Voting Rights Act, which would restore provisions of the original act and also tackle gerrymandering.

In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated protections at the center of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, saying states should not need federal approval to change their elections laws.

O’Rourke earlier this month unveiled his voter rights plan that includes making Election Day a federal holiday, allowing automatic and same-day voter registration and cracking down on laws and practices that make it more difficult to vote.

The former Texas congressman, who as part of his plan has set a goal of getting 35 million new Americans to the polls and raising voter turnout to 65% in 2024, also calls for pushing states to implement same-day voter registration and automatically register voters when they do business at a government office.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke addresses the South Carolina Democratic Party convention, Saturday, June 22, 2019 in Columbia, S.C. (Photo: Meg Kinnard, AP)

Replacing every voting machine

Warren is billing her plan as a broad proposal to bolster election security and improve participation. She includes calls for the federal government to replace every voting machine in the country with new state-of-the-art equipment and require adoption of a uniform federal ballot, mandate automatic voter registration and same-day registration for federal elections.

In addition, she wants to ban the purge of any voter from state election rolls unless the person asked to be removed or the election agency has proof to remove the person from rolls such as death, change of address, or loss of eligibility. She said her $40 billion plan, the latest in a long string of proposals, would be funded through a new tax that she wants to levy on families and individuals earning more than $50 million per year.

Warren also wants to create a new agency, the Secure Democracy Administration, that would manage cybersecurity aspects of the election and develop additional security procedures administering elections.  In the 2016 election, the Russian government tried to infiltrate at least 39 state election systems and at least one election equipment company.

McConnell has resisted a push by Senate Democrats to bolster election security as well as bipartisan legislation from Sen Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that would set in motion new sanctions against Russia if there is interference in the 2020 election.

The majority leader questioned the need for such legislation.

“I do think the missing story that very few of you have written about is the absence of problems in the 2018 election,” McConnell told reporters earlier this month. “I think the Trump administration did a much, much better job.”

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