Make Election Day a federal holiday, require in-person voting

By Ethan Watson
Real Clear Wire

Our calendars are full of useless holidays. Just last week, we saw Credit Union Day, Mashed Potato Day and Raw Milk Cheese Appreciation Day. While observances like these are otherwise irrelevant at the national level, there is one day of the year that has long lacked federal “holiday” status: Election Day.

Unlike offhanded observances such as Earth Day, on which life goes on as usual, Election Day ought to be an official federal holiday like Presidents’ Day or Thanksgiving, with all non-essential workers receiving a paid day off to carry out their civic duty. Establishing this yearly event as a federal holiday would increase voter turnout, restore faith in our elections, and, most importantly, boost morale through a shared civic display.

Designating Election Day as a national holiday and giving workers the day off would largely mitigate the need for accommodations like mail-in voting and early voting, allowing policymakers to require in-person voting except in special circumstances. This would also make possible a mass return to paper ballots, eliminating the need for voting machines which have been swamped in scandal since 2020.

Some say mail-in voting is ripe for manipulation; others contend voting machines are prone to hacks and glitches. While it’s difficult to quantify how much voting machines or absentee ballots have increased the risk of election-rigging, if at all, it’s clear that a significant number of Americans have lost faith in our elections – just as they’ve lost faith in our media, our government, and their friends and neighbors.

In a world where most Americans have the day off work and vote in person, on a paper ballot, many common doubts about our election system become moot. Of course, exceptions will apply for essential workers or citizens temporarily living in a different state, but the vast majority of Americans would have to physically go to a polling place on Election Day and vote. Volunteers would then count the paper ballots onsite, significantly reducing doubts about voting machine integrity or ballots lost in the mail.

Prominent right-wingers like Vivek Ramaswamy have actually promoted this plan over the course of the 2024 election, citing election integrity concerns. Yet, making Election Day a federal holiday would go far beyond healing the election-denial wound – it would generate patriotism with a new shared tradition.

Civic virtue is a good thing, and public reminders of it are even better. To appreciate our democracy and commit ourselves to maintaining it, we need a public reminder that tyranny, not democracy, has been the norm throughout human history. The United States is exceptional because we establish power not through strength, but by consensus.

As humans, we need physical reminders to keep us mindful of such abstract truths. That’s why we build churches, write great works of literature, and even get tattoos. If the principles we hold dear aren’t manifested in anything, we lose them.

A mass migration of Americans to the polls every year would become a powerful symbol of our democracy’s resilience, a shining example to the world that our grand experiment worked. Moreover, a whole day for voting could inspire people to participate in state and local elections – affairs that have an even greater impact on their daily lives than national elections.

People would look forward to voting. It would become a celebrated ritual in a public life otherwise devoid of shared traditions. One could imagine pre-voting brunches and post-voting barbecues. Families could go to the polls in the morning and spend the rest of the day enjoying their freedom and leisure together. Children would grow up looking forward to participating in their citizenship, just like we look forward to Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the first day of summer vacation.

These days, Americans can’t even agree on whether the Fourth of July is a day worth celebrating (spoiler alert, it is). But without a shared culture, we cannot have a nation. It’s time to start rebuilding that shared culture with a national day that puts our exceptional founding ideals to work.

Ethan Watson is a Young Voices contributor working towards a Master of Accounting degree at the University of Kansas. He holds dual undergraduate degrees in Accounting and Political Science with an eye toward law school in the near future. Follow him on X: @erwatson13.

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