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Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
“We”? Who are “we”? Star fleet?
People have to remember that this is the Internet, this thing is global.
Because corporations own you and this means they can pressure how you vote in key states.
We don’t get the day off to vote in MN but you are legally allowed to take time off to go vote (with pay). So when I was in the office, I always voted in the middle of the day right after my lunch hour.
Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I’ve ever gotten from any boss before. I’m sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it’s never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would’ve talked shit if I said that’s what I wanted to do with my time.
I had a job for a few years with no MLK and no President’s day. That stretch from New Years to Memorial Day was very, very long.
Early voting is a better solution to the problem than making it a day off, though.
In most civilized countries, voting takes place on weekends and your employer is legally obligated to let you leave work to go vote
Employees have to let you leave to vote.
They can also fire you the next day for a coincidentally unrelated reason, and unless you have 50k in lawyers retainers handy there’s not shit you can do about it
That’s not true.
In most states, employers don’t need any reason at all to fire you.
“At will” employment, woohoo!
Depends on the state. In MN state law allows you take as much time as necessary to go vote with pay. I can’t remember when this was passed but I’m going to “Thanks Walz” anyways.
Some places give you a whole week to vote, and the polls are open 12 hours a day. So if you something happens and your plans are ruined, you have ample time to still make it to the polls.
Meanwhile all the schools in my area are polling places so kids don’t have school.
Forcing many parents to take the day off anyway, but unpaid (or using PTO time, if they have it).
Working as intended. Make voting as difficult and distasteful as possible so we can welcome fascism with big warm hugs. Finally, no more of that voting nonsense.
Because they don’t want the workers voting.
If you “can’t go to the ballot because you need to work” you are a plebeian, and so they have a way of excluding you while technically not excluding you.
A lot of modern oligarchy is powered by these technicalities. Technically everyone has a “right to” participate in the system, but the whole apparatus is rigged in such a way that in material reality only the same nobility caste that has called the shots since the bronze fucking age gets to call the shots.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
By law employers are required to allow their workers an opportunity to vote. The problem is other stuff like taking their kids to school and having to go to work right after and by the time you make it to the poll through rush hour traffic, the line is out the door and they shut it down and don’t let you vote even though you waited for an hour.
I’m so glad my state has mail-in voting. Sorry buddy.
My roommate asked for time off to vote; her employer literally laughed at her. Now, there is legal recourse there, and she would have likely won and even gotten awarded a money judgment.
But she needed that job without interruption. This was in Canada, by the way.
This is why you don’t ask.
Also, you don’t really need a whole day. I’m also Canadian. Employers are required to allow you time to do it, not an entire day.
I would phrase the question like this: “I need to take time to go vote. Would you prefer I take the morning or afternoon off?”
If they so no to both, you say “you know it’s illegal not to allow me time off to vote, right?”
I’ve changed careers since the last election, but as a driver I’d just say “I’m going to swing by the polling place in my way to or back from wherever” and it was never a problem.
A job I had for a couple of years had really annoying emails sent based on badging in/out. When I’d come back from voting I’d get one for some out of office violation and would just reply to HR with a link to the MN statute requiring paid time off for voting:
https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/election-day-voting/time-off-work-to-vote/
It really depends on how much you need that job to like
Not be homeless
And how hard it was to get the job in the first place.
You can make your legal rights count if you have options.
If you don’t, you let your boss walk all over you and thank them for it.
I mean you do have options. We have the labour board here in Canada.
You don’t tell your employer you’re talking to them. You let them contact the employer. They can’t fire you while an investigation is ongoing.
So the bare minimum that even my little Eastern European hellhole could do was that a polling place closing means that those in line can still vote.
A poll worker gets in line exactly at closing time, and those in front get to vote however long that takes. It’s not hard to organize.
Yeah, it’s exactly the same in the very opposite end of Europe (and about as poor) - Portugal - which I know becaused I maned the polling places a couple of times and read the rule book.
Thanks for your service, unironically
People generally do it because they’re in a political party, plus you get paid for it though I think it takes many months for it to come in (never really worried enough about it to keep an eye out for that money coming into my bank account) and it doesn’t add up to much per hour for what’s a really long day (from about 6 AM to around 10 - 12PM depending on how long it takes to count the votes of one’s polling station).
It’s an interesting experience if a bit tiring.
The thing is
“The law says it has to happen” doesn’t mean it happens.
And the weaker labour protections are in your country, the more bosses can walk all over their employees.
In the US, with their so-called “at-will” employment system, you can be fired at any time for any reason, and if you need the job to like, live, you won’t even bring up your legal rights.
Mind you even on countries where polling happens exclusively on Sunday (like mine!) there are other subtle ways The Poors tm are kept from enfranchisement. “Voting happens on a work day” is just one of the ways it happens in one of our world’s oligarchies.
If you’re in food service, election day is likely an all hands on deck situation. Incredibly shitty. And here in the US a ton of people work weekends. I didn’t get a job that had weekends off until my mid 30s.
And why is presidents day called Washington’s birthday?
Fred Astaire would explain it to you, but he can’t tell a lie.
Because originally the holiday just celebrated the first US president, George Washington and then they consolidated into Presidents Day so they didn’t have plethora of Dead President Birthday holidays.
We had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday both as holidays when I was a kid. Lincoln was born in November, so it wasn’t a perfect balance with February, but it was close enough to one.
Yeah and I think they collapsed into president’s day to avoid adding a day for Kennedy.
That would make sense.
Voter suppression
If people actually voted, they might vote for people the oligarchy doesn’t like. Bet you didn’t think about that, huh? Checkmate libruls!
100% this
What? Don’t you get like 16 hours to vote on polling day?
We have elections on Thursdays in the UK and no one claims not having the whole day off is “voter supression” because you’ve got plenty of time to vote and it only takes five minutes.
and it only takes five minutes.
Not here it doesn’t. There are constant intentional efforts to shut down polling locations in communities with a disproportionate amount of minorities. The intent is to force minority voters to travel further to get to a polling place (which may not be an option due to our joke of a public transit network), and to force them to wait in line for hours at a time to vote.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/04/upshot/voting-wait-times.html
In some jurisdictions, they’ve gone so far with their voter suppression tactics that they make it a punishable offense to provide food and water for those waiting in the hours long lines to vote.
And that’s all before accounting for the fact that many people need to have two jobs to be stable, which makes it hard to get to the polls even if the lines are short.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/8-7-million-americans-now-193011733.html
The U.S. election system is a joke, and a sham democracy.
The U.S.
election systemis a joke, and a sham democracy.FTFY
That’s fair
it only takes five minutes
Sure, if I park on the sidewalk and skip everyone waiting in line. It actually takes less than 5 minutes.
Everything about your comment is wrong. No we don’t get guaranteed time off of any kind but even if we did, the amount of time it takes varies wildly.
They are saying that you have all day to vote, not that you get 16 hours of time off.
But what you don’t have is stuff like a way for people to watch your kids when you’re off work so you stand in a line for 2 hours in order to vote, something kids are not known for being able to put up with easily.
And then there’s the transportation they may not have. If you have to walk an hour to get to that two hour line, that’s even more time used up.
And then there’s the fact that someone exhausted from a day of work may not have the energy to stand in line for 20 minutes, let alone 2 hours.
I see. Well, still, polling centers may not be open or accessible 24/7. What people outside the US don’t get is that we have federal state and local laws so you can rarely say anything is true across the country.
Not to mention that people work long or double shifts sometimes.
Voting on election day can take way more than five minutes, however, in most cases, you have weeks to vote.
Dudes working at most hourly lower end type jobs still wouldn’t get election day off, unless you mandated like octuple pay for anyone working that day (They should)
We should just have elections on presidents day.
And that way presidents day finally has an actual purpose.
It has a purpose…that’s when we have big sales at the car dealerships. Just as George Washington always wanted.
How would people have time to get more car-poor if they had to stop shopping to do something silly like vote for the leader of the free world?
I’d feel weird voting for other stuff on a day called presidents Day now. Maybe we should add more days. Like governors day and mayors day. Oh and county comptroller day!!! We should have cookouts on that day also, obviously.
Yeah but then how would we celebrate Director of Parks and Recreation day?
You are getting President’s Day off?
Cuz America is a backwards ass country
A shit hole country
A third world country in a Prada belt.
