Decision day should be national holiday

By: Zack Colman Posted: 11/04/08 5:07pm

Today surely feels like a holiday.

It’s odd to me that in this nation of ours, the one that loves democracy so much that it’s willing to kill other people to show how great it actually is, that our election day isn’t a national holiday.

True, it’s our “civic duty” to go out and vote, whereas it’s not our civic duty to eat turkey on Thanksgiving or make the pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument on President’s Day.

But who actually could tell me when Columbus Day is (or was, since it already occurred this year)? Yet we know that every first Tuesday of November is election day.

It’s sometimes too difficult for people to vote with class and work and all these other daily obligations. With an election like this, it’s even more difficult given some of the long lines.

I understand this is a somewhat strange election, being that people actually like the candidates rather than picking between the lesser of two evils (or several evils for all those U.S. Taxpayers and Green Party supporters). It’s also a celebration of the end of eight years of the Bush administration, which some would say deserves a whole month of religious dedication and worship.

In a country with some of the most deplorable voter participation numbers, making election day a national holiday would improve those statistics.

There is the flip side to this, of course. By making it a national holiday, you create more opportunities for less passionate, less educated voters to head to the polls. By keeping election day just a regular day, it could be argued that only those who really care about politics and our nation in general will vote.

I disagree with this, though. There are plenty of informed voters who simply cannot fit voting into their regular work day.

Yes, it’s a duty to vote. But our nation is making it a chore.

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