Want Election Day to Be a National Holiday? Model it by Closing Your Office.

Be the change you want in a workplace.

Every election cycle we plead with voters to take this election seriously because it is the most important of our lifetime. And every election cycle, it’s more difficult for people to vote and our nation refuses to make Election Day a national holiday to ensure everyone who would like to vote is able to do so. Companies are required to give employees two hours off to be able to vote, but long lines due to voter suppression tactics mean two hours is just a drop in the bucket for the length of time it can take to vote in some states.

In addition to allowing voters to vote early and by mail, many countries make their election day a national holiday so that workers are given the day off to vote. The United States has yet to do this, but we could if we start organizing for it. Making Election Day a national holiday won’t solve all of our voter suppression and white suppression issues, but it is an opportunity for us to live our values and make sure people who want to vote can do so. While it’s going to take a while for us to make Election Day a national holiday, we can jumpstart it by modeling it at our own organizations.

Offering Election Day as a paid day off means that employees can have the opportunity to organize in their communities to help their neighbors and loved ones to get to the polls and withstand the voter suppression lines. They can drop water bottles and pizza at the polls. They can find time within their own schedule to vote. Workers don’t have to use their paid time off to exercise their right to vote. Closing our offices on Election Day, or at the very least giving non-essential employees the day off, allows workers to also volunteer as poll workers and election judges, to help ensure the integrity of our local elections. It can also give workers another day of rest, and that’s important too.

Of course, only some organizations or clinics will be able to close on Election Day. We still have patients to care for every day. Advocacy organizations that do voter engagement work and organize candidate races will still have a mountain of work they need to see through. But, for those organizations, the day off could be offered to non-election related staff and those who do have to work could be offered holiday pay of time and a half. We can create the change we’d like to see in our nation in our own workplaces first.

Remember when few organizations honored Indigenous People’s Day and instead celebrated the genocidal rapist who got lost on his ships? The shift was a huge organizing campaign to not only change the narrative and educate around Indigenous People’s Day, but also with workplaces refusing to celebrate that man’s day, and instead closing their offices in honor of Indigenous People. Similarly, several years ago, organizations began closing their offices for Juneteenth to honor Black communities, ongoing police violence, and the observation of the remembrance itself for Black enslaved people in Texas who learned late that they were free. Workplaces began offering the day as a paid holiday to ensure that employees knew the importance and significance of the day. Let’s model our values in our workplaces first.

We can do that in our movement for Election Day, and hopefully across the nation for everyone.