10 ms·

Startups, let’s act: Make Nov 8 a Holiday

110 points by yurisagalov 10y ago

daniel_levine 10y ago
Huge fan of this! Increasing voter turnout is something I think everyone can get behind and has a tremendous impact!
- ryandrake 10y ago
  I thought that increased voter turnout (at least in the USA) tends to benefit one party disproportionately more than the other, and is therefore a partisan issue. This is why efforts to disqualify voters tend to be supported by one party and opposed by the other, and vice versa for efforts to open up voting to more people.
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
    It may benefit one party more than the other, but... is that really an argument for not increasing the turnout? It sounds crazy to me that anyone can argue against it in a system whose legitimacy comes from regular expressions of the popular will.
    - briandear 10y ago
      Popular will can be a dangerous thing if the popular will is dominated by ignorance. I personally don't want everyone to vote. Kayne West would end up president.
      - SapphireSun 10y ago
        You're right, but... what's the alternative? Fear of "mob rule" is what kept the nobility afraid of a transition to representative government. I want the populace's will represented (constrained by constitutional protections of various rights), but I'll admit sometimes you just wish you had another populace. That's just the cards you're dealt. Other forms of government aren't responsive to the people. This comic was an amusing commentary on this topic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sword-of-democracy http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sword-of-democracy
        Retra 10y ago
        You don't really want the populace's will represented, though. You want decisions to be made in the manner that best conforms to the populations needs. The difference being that the former tends to reflect what people currently know and feel while the latter reflects what they would do if they had more information and behaved rationally.
dibujante 10y ago
> And of Silicon Valley workers between the ages of 25 and 34, only 19% voted in the last general election. Um, aren't Silicon Valley workers more likely to be immigrants? They can't vote.
- Namrog84 10y ago
  I would hope the % is based off eligible voter workers. Otherwise you are right to say it's non representative
- Bahamut 10y ago
  Most I've encountered here are US citizens.
redthrowaway 10y ago
Nice idea, but is there any race at any level in SV/CA that's actually competitive? The "let's take action" narrative rings a bit hollow when you could empty out every office in the Bay Area and wind up with exactly the same elected officials that you would have if everyone stayed home.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  I think it's important to remember that the most important elections to everyday people are often not DC elections but rather local elections. Municipal, school boards, etc. In those elections, turn out matters a LOT, and has huge impact.
  - mkaziz 10y ago
    People always say that, but it's not clear to me how. Candidates for those elections are often folks I don't know anything about, and at best I'll have a flier from an appropriately-stationed candidate near my train station to go off of. I don't know where to get information on candidates for those elections!
    - groby_b 10y ago
      If only there were tools that allowed searching the Internet. If only there were neighbors one could ask. If only there were city council meetings one could attend. If only one could mail a letter or make a phone call to the candidates, to ask them about things one considers important. You get the information by going out and getting it. If you don't, you're saying "I don't care, at all". And those local candidates will often move on to the next higher level at some point. At which point suddenly "I don't care" turns into "we only have terrible choices".
      - jcranmer 10y ago
        It's actually quite difficult to find information on, say, Soil and Water Conservation District Manager (yes, we elect those in some places), particularly since that minor of a race might not even result in websites. It's also difficult to get a full sense of the issues that matter in a race by reading the candidates' websites--and if your local newspaper doesn't help by providing interviews, you can be quite SOL. The last election took me about 1-1½ hour to figure out whom I was going to vote for.
acveilleux 10y ago
Is there no provision at all for time off to vote? In Canada, an elector must have 3 consecutive hours to vote and if that means taking an hour or two off work, the employer must provide that paid time off or face a 2000$ fine or 3 months imprisonment.
- eplanit 10y ago
  Most states have absentee voting, wherein you can mail in your ballot by election day (up to 4 weeks in advance). This has become increasingly popular over the years -- I've used this method exclusively for > 20 years. Absentee voting was introduced to increase turnout; ironically, though, some research shows that the idea doesn't work[1]. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/23/study-early-voting-associated-with-lower-turnout/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/23/study-early-...
- maxerickson 10y ago
  30 states have laws requiring time off to vote. https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace Combined with early voting: https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting And polls being open for 12 hours or more in most places. http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/voter-registration-deadlines-poll-hours.html http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/voter-registration-d...
keithwarren 10y ago
I would be curious to see a whole state do this and see if participation really changed. we assume so but data is not there that I know of.. I believe the real solution is to stop with the election day concept and move more to an election week or something similar.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  There are plenty of places in the US that do that, and it helps some. But we already know from extensive study of political systems in modern democracies that the biggest reason for low turnout in the US is the fact that very large groups in the electorate see no candidate that represents their interests well when voting, and see no strong basis to select between the viable choices, due to the partisan duopoly produced as a natural result of the combination of majority-runoff and plurality elections for most offices. If you really want to improve participation in US elections, fiddling with the mechanics, scheduling, and incidental related features of casting ballots without changing the electoral system in a fundamental way isn't going to have more than marginal effect.
miend 10y ago
#1 way to increase voter turnout: Make it not seem pointless.
- groby_b 10y ago
  #1 way of not making it pointless? Actually getting asses out of seats, so people vote on candidates that matter to them. 60%-70% of eligible voters sit at home, whining how their vote won't change things anyways. Guess what - it just might, if you actually voted. The number of non-voters dwarfs actual voters. If everybody voted, they could duke it out with several independent candidates and still trounced the established ones. (Yes, that's an unlikely scenario. But voting has power - if you actually care to do it)
  - brlewis 10y ago
    This sounds like an argument for making the primary elections into holidays. By the time the general election rolls around it's too late.
    - groby_b 10y ago
      I think that a) All elections should offer a mail-in ballot b) All elections should be on Saturday or Sunday c) If you work on those days, you should be entitled to paid time off. In that order. Alas, c) is the only item our community can affect, so we'll have to do that if we want to do anything. [Edit: I also think that HN really could do with support for enumerations. We're engineers. We enumerate :)]
    - tormeh 10y ago
      The primaries can just be moved. The democratic and republican party aren't government institutions written into the constitution, they're just associations of politicians.
  - miend 10y ago
    To my shame, I started with a low-effort comment instead of fleshing out what I meant, but there are several more (and more powerful) difficulties regarding the election system than simply "people are lazy/can't make it to the polls". I won't get into details until I need to, but a bullet point list of the additional problems that must be resolved in order to stop the process from feeling "pointless" is as follows: 1. First-past-the-post/winner-take-all voting system. This essentially guarantees that third party candidates will never be chosen (due to the presence of the Spoiler Effect), and that the winning candidate will rarely represent more than a small fraction of the actual voting population. Even if asses were forced out of seats, they will likely feel unable to vote for the candidate who matters to them. The problem of the voting system must be resolved. 2. "Statistical" insignificance. Not referring to actual statistical insignificance, a reasonable person can calculate the difference between the time/resources spent going to vote and expected rewards from that activity (chance that their vote will decide the election + chance of the outcome having a significant positive impact according to their initial political preferences), and the time/resources spent, for example, playing the lottery. If their resource:reward ratio in playing the lottery is more favorable than the same ratio in a general election, you can be sure many people would feel like the general election is at least as pointless -- if not more so -- for the same reasons. The problem of insignificance must be resolved. 3. Gerrymandering. For huge segments of the US, your vote literally does not matter for the general election even in that tiny statistical sense. This is because the US is divided up into voting districts, where the majority of votes in a district decide the entire district's "vote". This means that depending on how the districts are carved up (which they are, into abominable, exploitative patterns), these majorities can be greatly manipulated. If you're a Democrat in many areas of Texas, or a Republican in many areas of California, your vote will have a net effect of zero by default if you live in a district with a different majority. You could have 40% of a country's population be conservative, and 60% progressive, and as long as the districts are drawn such that this 60-40 ratio is preserved in all of the districts, every district vote will come up progressive, leaving almost half the nation entirely unrepresented. Obviously, if your vote does not even matter because other people in your local area happen to think differently to you, this can and will contribute to a feeling of pointlessness. You have to solve the problem of gerrymandering. 4. Even assuming people aren't dissuaded by the feeling of general insignificance, by the seeming impenetrability of the winner-take-all voting structure, or by the awful reality of gerrymandering, there is still another big problem to overcome, and that is the problem of voter ignorance. There is a real argument to be made that without an amount of education and diligence far outweighing the expected benefits of a perfect democratic election (one which lacks all of the aforementioned issues), voters will still not be able to make a truly rational choice, or a choice in their own best interests. The way to exemplify the reality of this problem is by asking any given person "What are the last votes that your congressional representatives made?" I will be stunned if they could answer for either state or national-level politics unless they work in politics or political media themselves (maybe not even then). But far beyond this, in order to make a decision not out of ignorance, they need solid personal knowledge on a wide variety of topics like economics, technology, ethics/philosophy, many of the sciences, current events, etc. Things which the average person justifiably does not believe they can afford to learn. But if they know just enough to be aware of what they don't know, they will probably feel that it is pointless. You have to solve the problem of voter ignorance. There are certainly a number of other factors involving the inscrutability of government processes and bureaucracies, impenetrability of hegemonic power blocs, and general corruption that add to this overwhelming sense of pointlessness. Many people simply seem to believe, understandably, that the deck is stacked entirely against them. As an average citizen, the more deeply one examines the government and the political world, the more fruitless it feels.
nradov 10y ago
This is silly. They should be encouraging voting by mail instead. It's much more efficient and cost effective for everyone concerned. In CA voters don't even have to pay postage any more.
- kevinjcliao 10y ago
  Did you read the article? This is a pragmatic response to known flaws in the voting system. Yes, in an ideal world legislature will make policy changes to make voting easier, but until that happens making election day a holiday is a start.
  - nradov 10y ago
    Yes I read the article. There's nothing pragmatic about it. There are no major flaws in the mail voting system, at least not in CA. Registration takes only a few minutes and then they mail you a ballot every election. If voters can't be bothered to do that then it seems unlikely they would actually show up and wait in line at a polling place. If companies want to give employees an extra holiday then sure, go ahead. But that won't increase voter participation.
    - dingaling 10y ago
      > There are no major flaws in the mail voting system In general terms postal voting, and any method for voter-not-present polling, is open to coercion and intimidation. That's why voting-in-person in booths remains the primary method, even in countries such as the UK where voting papers are logged against the identity of the voter ( it takes a court order to de-seal that information ).
      - wutbrodo 10y ago
        I don't see how this is relevant to the context of the conversation: the perspective of the individual nonvoter being incentivized to vote.
      - donutz 10y ago
koenigdavidmj 10y ago
My home state of Washington exclusively uses mail-in ballots. (There are dropboxes if you can't afford a stamp.) Our voter participation rate in the 2012 election was about 60% of voting-age population, compared to about 55% listed for the same year in the article. The 2014 election participation rate was just under 40%, which is quite a bit higher than the 30% listed for California, but still very low. You can't make this any easier, and half the state still does not vote. My Washington statistics come from: http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx
- count 10y ago
  You could easily make it easier and engage younger folks: make it a Tinder style app. Swipe right on the president you want to match with!
  - M2Ys4U 10y ago
    You might get a few more "young" people participating, but electronic voting is such an absolutely terrible idea.
    - Aloha 10y ago
      I dont think electronic voting on its face is an inherently bad idea - but I've yet to see a proposal I like very much. Electronic Collection of votes seems very logical, if you then immediately generate a paper record (like a punched card) of the results of that particular ballot. Those paper results could then be tabulated and compared to the electronic results.
      - superuser2 10y ago
        At which point you have used the electronic voting system as a very expensive pencil.
        duaneb 10y ago
throwanem 10y ago
Is this really a problem? Throughout my entire career I've never worked for any organization that had a problem with those of its staff members who are citizens of the United States discharging the responsibilities that come along with that status. It seems improbable on its face that Silicon Valley startups would make this so difficult that pausing the business for an entire day is necessary to resolve the issue. On the other hand, hey, who doesn't love an extra day off?
rconti 10y ago
Good idea. Related, relevant: "Employees who begin their work day less than 3 hours after polls open and finish less than 3 hours before polls close are entitled to 2 hours leave to vote (or more if distance requires). The employee must give notice the day before Election Day and cannot have pay reduced if proof of voting is provided." http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  That would help, but it doesn't directly address the working poor with multiple jobs. Let's say polls are open from 6am-10pm. Job 1 starts at 6am and ends at 3pm - condition not met. Job 2 starts at 4pm and ends at 8pm - condition still not met. Even as our national unemployment starts to get back to the natural rate of ~5%, underemployment is still a big problem, as is cost of living being too high in many places for the working class. Hence, the rise of the working poor, and multiple jobs to make ends meet. It needs to be a national holiday with anyone normally scheduled to work that day getting paid for it. Automatic voter registration + mail in ballots easily accessible would be one alternative. Stepping back to consider the situation, there really isn't a good reason I can think of to not shut it down and let our citizens choose their next leaders. If one paid day for your employees every two years puts you out of business, so be it.
  - briandear 10y ago
    With early voting and absentee, there is no excuse for people not voting. We don't need a paid holiday. If people want to vote, they will.
bifrost 10y ago
I have to agree, its pretty weak that so few people actually get out and vote. To be blunt, it doesn't require that much effort or time; you can vote by mail in a decent amount of places as well.
netik 10y ago
I guess this will happen right around the time that startups actually give people 'unlimited vacation time', which generally means 'don't take it or you'll be fired/left out.'
rumayor 10y ago
Awesome idea! Great work!
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
This is absolutely a great place to start, but the rest of the country would need to follow. Election day should not be on a work day, as the working poor are disproportionately excluded because they cannot get to the polls (for a number of reasons that I'm not sure we need to get into). In addition, automatic voter registration and easily accessible mail in ballots are needed as well.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I would guess that the working poor also tend to disproportionately not work the normal 9-5 business week. Moving it to the weekend doesn't help when the weekend is the busiest time for retail and food. I'm not sure whether making it a holiday fixes this either -- those are exactly the types of places that are still open on holidays. We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes.
  - SmellTheGlove 10y ago
    You're correct. It needs to be a real, paid day off. It wouldn't kill us as a society to do that. And if that's enough to put someone out of business - 1 paid day every 2 years - so be it.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes. Voting over multiple days doesn't mean that partial results are available. (Given that, even in places that don't have all-mail elections, mail/absentee ballots are a significant fraction of ballots, we have voting over multiple days now -- even in the places that don't have "early voting" at actual polling locations. We don't have results before voting closes, though, and this prevents partial results from having an impact [outside of Presidential primaries, which are series of separate-but-related elections, where we have a very big effect of results early in the process].)
    - jdmichal 10y ago
gojomo 10y ago
In any well-functioning district, shouldn't an hour off be enough?
- daxelrod 10y ago
  Sure, but you can't assume a well-functioning district. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/controversy-surrounds-long-voting-lines-arizona http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/controversy-surround... Since your company's workforce likely comes from a bunch of different districts, it's also hard to extrapolate from your own experiences to all of theirs.
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
Just another random thought as I shovel more shit into this thread :) Beyond election day, we ought to to better with primary participation. I read somewhere that basically 9% of the voting public decided that Trump and Clinton would be our nominees. Even if 100% of voters show up on November 8, not enough of the public is in there driving the choices on the ballot that day. However, primary participation is a bigger issue than a day off. Even if you don't work at all, most people can't afford a day to caucus in the states that do it (I'm in one of those states), and everyone else is probably still hung over from the last election cycle. But 2016 is a banner year to show who we get as our choices when we stop paying attention in the primaries. When I go to the polls on Nov 8, no one on the ballot is actually someone I'd want to lead our country, and I bet a lot of people feel the same.
mlvljr 10y ago
Not 7th? :)
k3nx 10y ago
I like this idea, but I think it's just as important, if not more so, to vote in the Primary elections held before the general election. The primary determines who's on the general election ballot. If you ever wonder why the candidate you wanted to vote for never made it to the general, it could have been because they lost the primary. Also, absentee ballots are easy to do. Contact your County Elections Office (typically under the Clerks office) and ask how. It might just be as easy as that phone call. They will MAIL you a ballot, they might even include a postage paid return envelope and you should receive it 30-45 days before the election so you can fill it out and return it way before election night when it is counted.
mindslight 10y ago
Do we really need a new religious holiday? Because that's what democracy has become - the national religion. The fundamental problem of democracy is that people end up believing that the government works for them. Under other systems, people know they are at odds with their rulers. If things get bad enough, they will organize and rebel. But democracy simulates a pressure-relief valve for discontent, actually leaving people convinced that they're responsible for the crappy outcome! The presidential race is the focus because it's the archetype for the whole system [0]. Regardless of whether the dipshit or the criminal wins this fall, the useful idiots who fell for their revolutionary rhetoric will subsequently be justifying oppressive policies that hurt the losing team more than themselves. They'll receive none of the promised relief, yet they'll reassure themselves that the other skinjob would have been sooo much worse. It's a remarkable system for converting dissent into support, and I would call it elegant but for being its victim. [0] The exact same dynamic plays out in local races, choosing between the scumbags who raise taxes and create new nanny state regulations, or the asshats who underfund schools and let infrastructure fall apart. The bureaucracy's middle management or the scope of its control is rarely cut back.
huangc10 10y ago
Have to be the devil's advocate here. If you give an employee a day off to vote, what are the odds that they still don't vote? Will this really solve the problem of an apathetic employee? What about something else like a company held half day event that involves voting and doing something else fun (lunch or picnic?) ie. instead of a party bus...a voting bus of some sort?
- tormeh 10y ago
  Sure, some people will pirate PC games with or without Steam, but a lot of people switched to paying when it became more convenient. Convenience and availability matters. It wouldn't be that far-fetched to propose that this is also true in voting.
- mfringel 10y ago
  If I remove the first sentence from your posting, I get a straightforward statement that says "Employees will just take the day off and not vote." If that's your view, I suggest owning it.
Esau 10y ago
I've always thought that the national election day should be a holiday; especially since we have an extra day due to leap years and voting years coinciding (well, except for years ending in 00 that aren't equally divisible by 400).
- dantheman 10y ago
  Elections are held every year.
- marmshallow 10y ago
  Only the presidential vote happens every four years. There is voting for other elections every year.
  - Esau 10y ago
    I understand that but most people are only concerned about the presidential elections. The turn out on the off years reflects this.
K-Wall 10y ago
I always wondered why we only have a single election day given how long the candidates spend campaigning. Is there any reason why a 3 day window (or more) couldn't be used?
- rogerdpack 10y ago
  Mail-ins are accepted "over time" as it were. Which apparently doesn't help LOL. However, it might be nice to have multiple days (or strictly mail-in, as my city now does) to be able to avoid those long lines, those can be painful...
tomphoolery 10y ago
Yeah we should totally get a holiday for an act that takes all of 10-15 minutes and doesn't require drinking alcohol. /s Don't you guys have work from home policies? This is a solution looking for a problem.
izacus 10y ago
I'm not familiar with US election system, but is there a reason why elections in USA aren't on sundays? Here at least all voting is done on Sundays with reasoning being that this maximises the amount of people that can make it to the stand (since majority of population doesn't work on sundays and most of the others have a part-time schedule). What's the reason US avoids that?
- rglovejoy 10y ago
  http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-do-we-vote-on-a-tuesday-in-november http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-do-we-vote-on-a-...
donretag 10y ago
The US federal government only has the authority to grant holidays to federal employees. Employers are under no obligation to grant those holidays to their employees. How many have Columbus or Veterans day off? Both MLK and Presidents Day? Many employers and unions follow the federal calendar, but many do not. Some state governments do not even follow the federal calendar (MLK especially). Another federal holiday will just be another week day where most people go to work, but the banks are closed and your mail will not be delivered.

110 points by yurisagalov 10y ago

daniel_levine 10y ago

Huge fan of this! Increasing voter turnout is something I think everyone can get behind and has a tremendous impact!

ryandrake 10y ago
I thought that increased voter turnout (at least in the USA) tends to benefit one party disproportionately more than the other, and is therefore a partisan issue. This is why efforts to disqualify voters tend to be supported by one party and opposed by the other, and vice versa for efforts to open up voting to more people.
- SapphireSun 10y ago
  It may benefit one party more than the other, but... is that really an argument for not increasing the turnout? It sounds crazy to me that anyone can argue against it in a system whose legitimacy comes from regular expressions of the popular will.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Popular will can be a dangerous thing if the popular will is dominated by ignorance. I personally don't want everyone to vote. Kayne West would end up president.
    - SapphireSun 10y ago
      You're right, but... what's the alternative? Fear of "mob rule" is what kept the nobility afraid of a transition to representative government. I want the populace's will represented (constrained by constitutional protections of various rights), but I'll admit sometimes you just wish you had another populace. That's just the cards you're dealt. Other forms of government aren't responsive to the people. This comic was an amusing commentary on this topic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sword-of-democracy http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sword-of-democracy
      - Retra 10y ago
        You don't really want the populace's will represented, though. You want decisions to be made in the manner that best conforms to the populations needs. The difference being that the former tends to reflect what people currently know and feel while the latter reflects what they would do if they had more information and behaved rationally.

dibujante 10y ago

> And of Silicon Valley workers between the ages of 25 and 34, only 19% voted in the last general election. Um, aren't Silicon Valley workers more likely to be immigrants? They can't vote.

Namrog84 10y ago
I would hope the % is based off eligible voter workers. Otherwise you are right to say it's non representative
Bahamut 10y ago
Most I've encountered here are US citizens.

redthrowaway 10y ago

Nice idea, but is there any race at any level in SV/CA that's actually competitive? The "let's take action" narrative rings a bit hollow when you could empty out every office in the Bay Area and wind up with exactly the same elected officials that you would have if everyone stayed home.

yurisagalov 10y ago
I think it's important to remember that the most important elections to everyday people are often not DC elections but rather local elections. Municipal, school boards, etc. In those elections, turn out matters a LOT, and has huge impact.
- mkaziz 10y ago
  People always say that, but it's not clear to me how. Candidates for those elections are often folks I don't know anything about, and at best I'll have a flier from an appropriately-stationed candidate near my train station to go off of. I don't know where to get information on candidates for those elections!
  - groby_b 10y ago
    If only there were tools that allowed searching the Internet. If only there were neighbors one could ask. If only there were city council meetings one could attend. If only one could mail a letter or make a phone call to the candidates, to ask them about things one considers important. You get the information by going out and getting it. If you don't, you're saying "I don't care, at all". And those local candidates will often move on to the next higher level at some point. At which point suddenly "I don't care" turns into "we only have terrible choices".
    - jcranmer 10y ago
      It's actually quite difficult to find information on, say, Soil and Water Conservation District Manager (yes, we elect those in some places), particularly since that minor of a race might not even result in websites. It's also difficult to get a full sense of the issues that matter in a race by reading the candidates' websites--and if your local newspaper doesn't help by providing interviews, you can be quite SOL. The last election took me about 1-1½ hour to figure out whom I was going to vote for.

acveilleux 10y ago

Is there no provision at all for time off to vote? In Canada, an elector must have 3 consecutive hours to vote and if that means taking an hour or two off work, the employer must provide that paid time off or face a 2000$ fine or 3 months imprisonment.

eplanit 10y ago
Most states have absentee voting, wherein you can mail in your ballot by election day (up to 4 weeks in advance). This has become increasingly popular over the years -- I've used this method exclusively for > 20 years. Absentee voting was introduced to increase turnout; ironically, though, some research shows that the idea doesn't work[1]. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/23/study-early-voting-associated-with-lower-turnout/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/23/study-early-...
maxerickson 10y ago
30 states have laws requiring time off to vote. https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-workplace Combined with early voting: https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting And polls being open for 12 hours or more in most places. http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/voter-registration-deadlines-poll-hours.html http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/voter-registration-d...

keithwarren 10y ago

I would be curious to see a whole state do this and see if participation really changed. we assume so but data is not there that I know of.. I believe the real solution is to stop with the election day concept and move more to an election week or something similar.

dragonwriter 10y ago
There are plenty of places in the US that do that, and it helps some. But we already know from extensive study of political systems in modern democracies that the biggest reason for low turnout in the US is the fact that very large groups in the electorate see no candidate that represents their interests well when voting, and see no strong basis to select between the viable choices, due to the partisan duopoly produced as a natural result of the combination of majority-runoff and plurality elections for most offices. If you really want to improve participation in US elections, fiddling with the mechanics, scheduling, and incidental related features of casting ballots without changing the electoral system in a fundamental way isn't going to have more than marginal effect.

miend 10y ago

#1 way to increase voter turnout: Make it not seem pointless.

groby_b 10y ago
#1 way of not making it pointless? Actually getting asses out of seats, so people vote on candidates that matter to them. 60%-70% of eligible voters sit at home, whining how their vote won't change things anyways. Guess what - it just might, if you actually voted. The number of non-voters dwarfs actual voters. If everybody voted, they could duke it out with several independent candidates and still trounced the established ones. (Yes, that's an unlikely scenario. But voting has power - if you actually care to do it)
- brlewis 10y ago
  This sounds like an argument for making the primary elections into holidays. By the time the general election rolls around it's too late.
  - groby_b 10y ago
    I think that a) All elections should offer a mail-in ballot b) All elections should be on Saturday or Sunday c) If you work on those days, you should be entitled to paid time off. In that order. Alas, c) is the only item our community can affect, so we'll have to do that if we want to do anything. [Edit: I also think that HN really could do with support for enumerations. We're engineers. We enumerate :)]
  - tormeh 10y ago
    The primaries can just be moved. The democratic and republican party aren't government institutions written into the constitution, they're just associations of politicians.
- miend 10y ago
  To my shame, I started with a low-effort comment instead of fleshing out what I meant, but there are several more (and more powerful) difficulties regarding the election system than simply "people are lazy/can't make it to the polls". I won't get into details until I need to, but a bullet point list of the additional problems that must be resolved in order to stop the process from feeling "pointless" is as follows: 1. First-past-the-post/winner-take-all voting system. This essentially guarantees that third party candidates will never be chosen (due to the presence of the Spoiler Effect), and that the winning candidate will rarely represent more than a small fraction of the actual voting population. Even if asses were forced out of seats, they will likely feel unable to vote for the candidate who matters to them. The problem of the voting system must be resolved. 2. "Statistical" insignificance. Not referring to actual statistical insignificance, a reasonable person can calculate the difference between the time/resources spent going to vote and expected rewards from that activity (chance that their vote will decide the election + chance of the outcome having a significant positive impact according to their initial political preferences), and the time/resources spent, for example, playing the lottery. If their resource:reward ratio in playing the lottery is more favorable than the same ratio in a general election, you can be sure many people would feel like the general election is at least as pointless -- if not more so -- for the same reasons. The problem of insignificance must be resolved. 3. Gerrymandering. For huge segments of the US, your vote literally does not matter for the general election even in that tiny statistical sense. This is because the US is divided up into voting districts, where the majority of votes in a district decide the entire district's "vote". This means that depending on how the districts are carved up (which they are, into abominable, exploitative patterns), these majorities can be greatly manipulated. If you're a Democrat in many areas of Texas, or a Republican in many areas of California, your vote will have a net effect of zero by default if you live in a district with a different majority. You could have 40% of a country's population be conservative, and 60% progressive, and as long as the districts are drawn such that this 60-40 ratio is preserved in all of the districts, every district vote will come up progressive, leaving almost half the nation entirely unrepresented. Obviously, if your vote does not even matter because other people in your local area happen to think differently to you, this can and will contribute to a feeling of pointlessness. You have to solve the problem of gerrymandering. 4. Even assuming people aren't dissuaded by the feeling of general insignificance, by the seeming impenetrability of the winner-take-all voting structure, or by the awful reality of gerrymandering, there is still another big problem to overcome, and that is the problem of voter ignorance. There is a real argument to be made that without an amount of education and diligence far outweighing the expected benefits of a perfect democratic election (one which lacks all of the aforementioned issues), voters will still not be able to make a truly rational choice, or a choice in their own best interests. The way to exemplify the reality of this problem is by asking any given person "What are the last votes that your congressional representatives made?" I will be stunned if they could answer for either state or national-level politics unless they work in politics or political media themselves (maybe not even then). But far beyond this, in order to make a decision not out of ignorance, they need solid personal knowledge on a wide variety of topics like economics, technology, ethics/philosophy, many of the sciences, current events, etc. Things which the average person justifiably does not believe they can afford to learn. But if they know just enough to be aware of what they don't know, they will probably feel that it is pointless. You have to solve the problem of voter ignorance. There are certainly a number of other factors involving the inscrutability of government processes and bureaucracies, impenetrability of hegemonic power blocs, and general corruption that add to this overwhelming sense of pointlessness. Many people simply seem to believe, understandably, that the deck is stacked entirely against them. As an average citizen, the more deeply one examines the government and the political world, the more fruitless it feels.

nradov 10y ago

This is silly. They should be encouraging voting by mail instead. It's much more efficient and cost effective for everyone concerned. In CA voters don't even have to pay postage any more.

kevinjcliao 10y ago
Did you read the article? This is a pragmatic response to known flaws in the voting system. Yes, in an ideal world legislature will make policy changes to make voting easier, but until that happens making election day a holiday is a start.
- nradov 10y ago
  Yes I read the article. There's nothing pragmatic about it. There are no major flaws in the mail voting system, at least not in CA. Registration takes only a few minutes and then they mail you a ballot every election. If voters can't be bothered to do that then it seems unlikely they would actually show up and wait in line at a polling place. If companies want to give employees an extra holiday then sure, go ahead. But that won't increase voter participation.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > There are no major flaws in the mail voting system In general terms postal voting, and any method for voter-not-present polling, is open to coercion and intimidation. That's why voting-in-person in booths remains the primary method, even in countries such as the UK where voting papers are logged against the identity of the voter ( it takes a court order to de-seal that information ).
    - wutbrodo 10y ago
      I don't see how this is relevant to the context of the conversation: the perspective of the individual nonvoter being incentivized to vote.
    - donutz 10y ago

koenigdavidmj 10y ago

My home state of Washington exclusively uses mail-in ballots. (There are dropboxes if you can't afford a stamp.) Our voter participation rate in the 2012 election was about 60% of voting-age population, compared to about 55% listed for the same year in the article. The 2014 election participation rate was just under 40%, which is quite a bit higher than the 30% listed for California, but still very low. You can't make this any easier, and half the state still does not vote. My Washington statistics come from: http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx

count 10y ago
You could easily make it easier and engage younger folks: make it a Tinder style app. Swipe right on the president you want to match with!
- M2Ys4U 10y ago
  You might get a few more "young" people participating, but electronic voting is such an absolutely terrible idea.
  - Aloha 10y ago
    I dont think electronic voting on its face is an inherently bad idea - but I've yet to see a proposal I like very much. Electronic Collection of votes seems very logical, if you then immediately generate a paper record (like a punched card) of the results of that particular ballot. Those paper results could then be tabulated and compared to the electronic results.
    - superuser2 10y ago
      At which point you have used the electronic voting system as a very expensive pencil.
      - duaneb 10y ago

throwanem 10y ago

Is this really a problem? Throughout my entire career I've never worked for any organization that had a problem with those of its staff members who are citizens of the United States discharging the responsibilities that come along with that status. It seems improbable on its face that Silicon Valley startups would make this so difficult that pausing the business for an entire day is necessary to resolve the issue. On the other hand, hey, who doesn't love an extra day off?

rconti 10y ago

Good idea. Related, relevant: "Employees who begin their work day less than 3 hours after polls open and finish less than 3 hours before polls close are entitled to 2 hours leave to vote (or more if distance requires). The employee must give notice the day before Election Day and cannot have pay reduced if proof of voting is provided." http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html

SmellTheGlove 10y ago
That would help, but it doesn't directly address the working poor with multiple jobs. Let's say polls are open from 6am-10pm. Job 1 starts at 6am and ends at 3pm - condition not met. Job 2 starts at 4pm and ends at 8pm - condition still not met. Even as our national unemployment starts to get back to the natural rate of ~5%, underemployment is still a big problem, as is cost of living being too high in many places for the working class. Hence, the rise of the working poor, and multiple jobs to make ends meet. It needs to be a national holiday with anyone normally scheduled to work that day getting paid for it. Automatic voter registration + mail in ballots easily accessible would be one alternative. Stepping back to consider the situation, there really isn't a good reason I can think of to not shut it down and let our citizens choose their next leaders. If one paid day for your employees every two years puts you out of business, so be it.
- briandear 10y ago
  With early voting and absentee, there is no excuse for people not voting. We don't need a paid holiday. If people want to vote, they will.

bifrost 10y ago

I have to agree, its pretty weak that so few people actually get out and vote. To be blunt, it doesn't require that much effort or time; you can vote by mail in a decent amount of places as well.

netik 10y ago

I guess this will happen right around the time that startups actually give people 'unlimited vacation time', which generally means 'don't take it or you'll be fired/left out.'

rumayor 10y ago

Awesome idea! Great work!

SmellTheGlove 10y ago

This is absolutely a great place to start, but the rest of the country would need to follow. Election day should not be on a work day, as the working poor are disproportionately excluded because they cannot get to the polls (for a number of reasons that I'm not sure we need to get into). In addition, automatic voter registration and easily accessible mail in ballots are needed as well.

jdmichal 10y ago
I would guess that the working poor also tend to disproportionately not work the normal 9-5 business week. Moving it to the weekend doesn't help when the weekend is the busiest time for retail and food. I'm not sure whether making it a holiday fixes this either -- those are exactly the types of places that are still open on holidays. We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes.
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  You're correct. It needs to be a real, paid day off. It wouldn't kill us as a society to do that. And if that's enough to put someone out of business - 1 paid day every 2 years - so be it.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > We need full time displacement, but voting over multiple days allows partial results to influence future votes. Voting over multiple days doesn't mean that partial results are available. (Given that, even in places that don't have all-mail elections, mail/absentee ballots are a significant fraction of ballots, we have voting over multiple days now -- even in the places that don't have "early voting" at actual polling locations. We don't have results before voting closes, though, and this prevents partial results from having an impact [outside of Presidential primaries, which are series of separate-but-related elections, where we have a very big effect of results early in the process].)
  - jdmichal 10y ago

gojomo 10y ago

In any well-functioning district, shouldn't an hour off be enough?

daxelrod 10y ago
Sure, but you can't assume a well-functioning district. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/controversy-surrounds-long-voting-lines-arizona http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/controversy-surround... Since your company's workforce likely comes from a bunch of different districts, it's also hard to extrapolate from your own experiences to all of theirs.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago

Just another random thought as I shovel more shit into this thread :) Beyond election day, we ought to to better with primary participation. I read somewhere that basically 9% of the voting public decided that Trump and Clinton would be our nominees. Even if 100% of voters show up on November 8, not enough of the public is in there driving the choices on the ballot that day. However, primary participation is a bigger issue than a day off. Even if you don't work at all, most people can't afford a day to caucus in the states that do it (I'm in one of those states), and everyone else is probably still hung over from the last election cycle. But 2016 is a banner year to show who we get as our choices when we stop paying attention in the primaries. When I go to the polls on Nov 8, no one on the ballot is actually someone I'd want to lead our country, and I bet a lot of people feel the same.

mlvljr 10y ago

Not 7th? :)

k3nx 10y ago

I like this idea, but I think it's just as important, if not more so, to vote in the Primary elections held before the general election. The primary determines who's on the general election ballot. If you ever wonder why the candidate you wanted to vote for never made it to the general, it could have been because they lost the primary. Also, absentee ballots are easy to do. Contact your County Elections Office (typically under the Clerks office) and ask how. It might just be as easy as that phone call. They will MAIL you a ballot, they might even include a postage paid return envelope and you should receive it 30-45 days before the election so you can fill it out and return it way before election night when it is counted.

mindslight 10y ago

Do we really need a new religious holiday? Because that's what democracy has become - the national religion. The fundamental problem of democracy is that people end up believing that the government works for them. Under other systems, people know they are at odds with their rulers. If things get bad enough, they will organize and rebel. But democracy simulates a pressure-relief valve for discontent, actually leaving people convinced that they're responsible for the crappy outcome! The presidential race is the focus because it's the archetype for the whole system [0]. Regardless of whether the dipshit or the criminal wins this fall, the useful idiots who fell for their revolutionary rhetoric will subsequently be justifying oppressive policies that hurt the losing team more than themselves. They'll receive none of the promised relief, yet they'll reassure themselves that the other skinjob would have been sooo much worse. It's a remarkable system for converting dissent into support, and I would call it elegant but for being its victim. [0] The exact same dynamic plays out in local races, choosing between the scumbags who raise taxes and create new nanny state regulations, or the asshats who underfund schools and let infrastructure fall apart. The bureaucracy's middle management or the scope of its control is rarely cut back.

huangc10 10y ago

Have to be the devil's advocate here. If you give an employee a day off to vote, what are the odds that they still don't vote? Will this really solve the problem of an apathetic employee? What about something else like a company held half day event that involves voting and doing something else fun (lunch or picnic?) ie. instead of a party bus...a voting bus of some sort?

tormeh 10y ago
Sure, some people will pirate PC games with or without Steam, but a lot of people switched to paying when it became more convenient. Convenience and availability matters. It wouldn't be that far-fetched to propose that this is also true in voting.
mfringel 10y ago
If I remove the first sentence from your posting, I get a straightforward statement that says "Employees will just take the day off and not vote." If that's your view, I suggest owning it.

Esau 10y ago

I've always thought that the national election day should be a holiday; especially since we have an extra day due to leap years and voting years coinciding (well, except for years ending in 00 that aren't equally divisible by 400).

dantheman 10y ago
Elections are held every year.
marmshallow 10y ago
Only the presidential vote happens every four years. There is voting for other elections every year.
- Esau 10y ago
  I understand that but most people are only concerned about the presidential elections. The turn out on the off years reflects this.

K-Wall 10y ago

I always wondered why we only have a single election day given how long the candidates spend campaigning. Is there any reason why a 3 day window (or more) couldn't be used?

rogerdpack 10y ago
Mail-ins are accepted "over time" as it were. Which apparently doesn't help LOL. However, it might be nice to have multiple days (or strictly mail-in, as my city now does) to be able to avoid those long lines, those can be painful...

tomphoolery 10y ago

Yeah we should totally get a holiday for an act that takes all of 10-15 minutes and doesn't require drinking alcohol. /s Don't you guys have work from home policies? This is a solution looking for a problem.

izacus 10y ago

I'm not familiar with US election system, but is there a reason why elections in USA aren't on sundays? Here at least all voting is done on Sundays with reasoning being that this maximises the amount of people that can make it to the stand (since majority of population doesn't work on sundays and most of the others have a part-time schedule). What's the reason US avoids that?

rglovejoy 10y ago
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-do-we-vote-on-a-tuesday-in-november http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/why-do-we-vote-on-a-...

donretag 10y ago

The US federal government only has the authority to grant holidays to federal employees. Employers are under no obligation to grant those holidays to their employees. How many have Columbus or Veterans day off? Both MLK and Presidents Day? Many employers and unions follow the federal calendar, but many do not. Some state governments do not even follow the federal calendar (MLK especially). Another federal holiday will just be another week day where most people go to work, but the banks are closed and your mail will not be delivered.