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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!
No, I literally can’t even vote for someone the oligarchs don’t control. They don’t make it to the ballot.
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.
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.
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.
Voting on election day can take way more than five minutes, however, in most cases, you have weeks to vote.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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 law also doesn’t require employers to pay for that time, so many can’t afford to take the time off even if their employer is chill about it.
Oh no it’s never paid, but they have to allow them time to vote. Usually that means wake up at 6am to get to the polls by 7
it’s never paid
As a salaried worker your pay will not change just because you took time off to vote. So it is de facto requires to pay for the time, but only for those who already have the privilege of a salaried position.
Edit to make my point even more clear: the current law is structural discrimination against poor people.
You are arguing semantics on whether it’s paid or not. No one cares. The point is, paid or not, your job has to give you time to vote, usually at the employees expense.
Thanks for your reply! I am not arguing semantics at all. I am pointing out an inherent disadvantage faced by lower paid workers in an unfair system. Which is the entire point of this discussion. The fact that you don’t care about a few hours of paid time perfectly demonstrates that the privileged benefactors of the current system don’t even realize that others are being actively oppressed through technicalities of the law.
I’m so glad my state has mail-in voting. Sorry buddy.
“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.”
Cuz America is a backwards ass country
A shit hole country
A third world country in a Prada belt.
Wait, you guys are getting President’s Day off work??
Yeah, making election day a national holiday doesn’t help those of us who don’t get most holidays off.
Right. Congress would need to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to mandate that employers give national holidays off to employees for this to apply to everyone.
Protesting for fair rest days has taken a back seat to letting women marry women and also ensuring women don’t fucking die around childbirth or complications getting there, which seem to be very pressing and fundamental issues we seem to have lost value in solving. Also, issues like black slavery and prisoner slavery and women’s slavery and rapists choosing their kids’ mom’s and something about the overwhelming prevalence of fucking boomsticks in every part of that and everything else, like schools.
It’s like there’s a million mind-numbingly simple things we should have solved trivially with an “of course I’m not a dick” vote that we seem to have stalled on or went backward about, and these are pushing the more nuanced class war issues onto the back back back burner pending their resolution.
Fuck this exhausting shit and the effort to just keep a country going where people are dying and blaming Biden for it. Secede from those richbitch fuckwits and their hillbilly fan base. When all their people are dying and dead, buy the land to settle the debt and then reunify better. We don’t tolerate intolerance, and maybe that means we can’t save this version of the matri-uh, union, and maybe we need to start working on the next.
Maybe it needs to super-national?
This was my thought as well. Too many years of retail has left me with an instinctual hatred for holidays. Like how Labor Day is a holiday for the rich to “celebrate” the working poor who have to work that day.
Maybe OP works at an elementary school 40 years ago.
Though somehow there’s usually a mattress sale.
Or a bank. Are banks ever actually open?
Is there ever not a mattress sale? And they advertise like crazy.
I’ve been getting it off for years. I know teachers do too, but I’m not a teacher.
Yes. Quite stupidly
Sure, here you go: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7329
One of many such bills.
Take a look at the sponsors. I’ll give you 1 guess at which party would vote it down, because it would hurt them in elections.
It’s the same reason Puerto Rico will never be a state.
Because only people who are able to afford a day off are supposed to vote. That’s also why republicans agitate against postal voting and why early vote ballot drop-offs are burning.
early vote ballot drop-offs are burning
omfjc… Thanks for the heads up. Link for anyone else who blinked and missed this on Monday.
Authorities, including the FBI, were investigating Monday after early morning fires were set in U.S. ballot drop boxes in Portland, Ore., and in nearby Vancouver, Wash., where hundreds of ballots were destroyed.
Even if you made it a federal holiday, the wage slaves would still have to work.
At least make it a sunday lol, a tuesday wtf?!!
It’s on Tuesday because that was actually convenient with the flow of business at the time. Most were Christian and wouldn’t work or travel on Sunday if possible, it often took a day’s travel to get to the nearest town with a polling place, and Wednesday was market day.
If Sunday and Wednesday are right out and you need a day’s travel time (which also can’t be Sunday or Wednesday) you’re basically left with Tuesday or Friday. And if you’re going to be in town for the market anyways then Tuesday makes more sense.
It is in November because that’s after the biggest harvests, but not so far after that the weather is likely to be rough. And it’s the Tuesday after the first Monday so that it can’t overlap with All Saints Day.
On the upside it could be changed with a regular old law, it doesn’t require an amendment or anything.
Some countries let you vote for 2-3 weeks, others it’s a sunday. Tusday was maybe the best a thousand years ago but who cares? Thanks for the interesting history lesson though!
Tusday was maybe the best a thousand years ago but who cares?
Closer to two hundred years ago, since the law in question was passed in 1854. But the point was it’s that way for a reason, and that reason was a good reason at the time it was done. It seems so weird now because of social change that has since made it inconvenient.
It can also be changed if Congress wanted to, as it’s just a regular law and not part of the Constitution or something else that would be harder to change.
how are federal holidays not mandatory time off dude there’s a reason they exist. what a backwards country.
edit: apparently the concept is so foreign that people don’t understand how these things work. of course there will be exceptions but of you work on a holiday you get a full day’s salary as overtime. this usually assures employers only force work when necessary because most would rather not pay extra. and of course further exceptions can be made into the law. no one said life should stop when there’s a holiday.
Yep. Your boss can still say no and just give you a day in lieu
I work in a hospital. Unfortunately, people don’t stop being sick on holidays, so someone has to work. I don’t see how it could be different in any other country.
Black and white rules always end up fucking someone over. For example I work in the entertainment industry and a lot of my income is from working on holidays, specifically because they are holidays. That aspect of my job is not exploitative, and if the option were taken away I would have big problems.
Good point, the real solution is to spread out the election and make voting easier, as in mail-in.
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
If only there existed, like, a club for workers where everyone pays a membership fee to cover each other’s legal costs and protect each other’s rights. We could call it a “togetherness” or something like that
If only…
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.
We should just have elections on presidents day.
And that way presidents day finally has an actual purpose.
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?
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?
Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
Like 95% of the US get neither off
Yeah, my current position is this way, and I’m a $programmingLanguage Developer.
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)
In France elections are held on a Sunday so most people don’t work, the others are allowed time off to vote of course
Well in the US, no one was originally intended to vote but the male landed gentry, who clearly could afford to travel for several days to their polling place, get plastered on local liquor, and just shout who they were voting for at whomever was supposed to jot that down. Them that person would go off and vote for whoever they wanted, in case the peasants had gotten any silly ideas and voted for the wrong guy.
I think what you just described is the electoral college
The poor and desperate will vote less under the current conditions. It is all baked into the US cake. Wait until you realize that the US never passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Still waiting on those bastard laggard states to ratify it for nearly 50 years.
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.
