TAKE: Our Election Day Poll

There is a groundswell of enthusiasm for making Election Day a national holiday to ensure everyone can get to vote without having to take time off work. In this Tweet, Tom Bevan, Co-Founder & President of RealClearPolitics makes his views clear.

As we know, American election laws have been reformed before with minimal impact on voter turnout which still remains low compared with other democracies around the world and many have made election day a holiday and this did in fact, lead to higher voter turnout. Brookings

For example, Australia, where the law states you MUST vote, typically has a turnout in the 90 percent or more range, and other nations such as Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico achieve very high turnout via universal voting and time off for voting.

Making Election Day a holiday would not necessarily involve adding a new holiday, which employers might resist—particularly following the addition of Juneteenth as a national holiday. Instead, Brookings suggests, lawmakers could simply move nearby Veterans’ Day to Election Day, emphasizing that voting is both a service to the country and a celebration of the rights and freedoms for which our servicemembers fight.

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