Elections are held on Tuesday as a way of restricting who can vote PERIOD.
Poorer voters have a harder time getting off work, and getting transportation to voting site, which is usually close to their home, but not their work.
As far as absentee ballots are concerned, sometimes they are difficult to get. My mother had trouble getting one when she was pregnant - my sister was due around election day. She finally got it, luckily - because my sister was, indeed, born on election day.
I assume there is some correlation between people who are unlikely to receive paid time off for voting and people that have to work on unusual days, so I'm not sure changing what day Election Day falls on will fix anything.
The solution is to mandate that employers give you a couple of paid hours off on Election Day. I would be surprised if this was not already the case in several states.
States can also help out by keeping the polls open for longer hours, so that someone who has to work an 8 hour shift has plenty of time on either side of their workday to go vote. (Last primary, I forgot in the morning, then worked late... and still had plenty of time to vote after work. The same is not true in every state.)
Do you need to get to the polling place? I guess all gas station workers are exempt. As is everybody working for the various transit systems.
Can you ensure nobody has a medical issue on a national holiday? Doctors, nurses, and hospital support staff are all working. This also brings on either the entire power grid, or someone in maintenance to watch the generators.
Do you eat? All restaurants are exempt. So are grocery stores. So are all the utilities related to energy needed for cooking. (though here Israel with their nobody working on the sabbath has an interesting take - in part that works there because non-jews are willing to work but it need not)
Are you going arrest foreigners the night before (which is to say no passports are valid, go home before voting day and come back afterwards - bad weather is not an excuse to plan ahead)? I guess hotels get to remain open.
You can go on. It turns out to run civilization we need a lot of people working even on holidays. Interestingly, it turns out a lot of these workers are the poorer people who you were trying to help.
There's no reason we can't take the positive step forward of making it a holiday now which would improve it for a huge amount of people and then improve it further.
It seems people want 100% solutions. If it's not perfect we might as well stay stuck where we are. This is essentially what you are saying. This is why no progress is ever made, because improvements are ignored because they are "not perfect." The world isn't perfect, but we can do better and making it a holiday will help significantly.
Keep searching for Utopia, while the pragmatists get things done.
Some states might even allow absentee ballots for those who will be present in the state, but are essential personnel who have been scheduled to work on election day. That's not something that can be established federally, though.
And it has to be on-par with things like memorial day, labor day, thanksgiving and christmas... plus include primaries as well.
If it is similar to President's day or Veterens day, not only will folks still work, but they will usually get paid normal wages that day as well.
As something that helps the problem, it is simple enough. It's not an abstract idea. Our particular vessel at implementing such a change is where the complexity lies and the problem is with that, not the idea.
Often times quick fixes solve major issues for enough time for more permanent solutions to be put in place. Patching a pothole does the job. It's not perfect, but your car won't get damaged anymore in the pothole.
Are you certain about this?
Making it a holiday is a huge step forward. Taking other steps (like mandated hours off for all jobs) can also be done. Why can't we have a small step forward? Is there a problem with progress if it doesn't fully solve the problem?
1.) There should be at least one federal holiday that constructs a three-day weekend each month. I think ideally, any new such holidays should grant the Friday, rather than Monday, as the holiday day - Friday is traditionally the day of dumping problems on someone else, and ruining their weekend. Ruining a three-day weekend in this fashion is especially egregious, and, at least temporarily, the Friday switchup should help to confuse the problem-dumpers.
2.) The informal Thanksgiving and Christmas-New Years week holidays should be formalized - these are already de facto periods of minimal productivity, they might as well be de jure, and we can just focus on being happy/miserable with our families during this period.
3.) In similar fashion, the entire 4th of July week should be declared a holiday, if for no other reason than to resolve issues of confusion on proper conduct when the 4th falls upon inconvenient days like Wednesday, as occurred this year. A week of vacation during the period when there is actually the potential of usable daylight and pleasant weather would have significant mental health implications.
4.) How the freak is voting day not a national holiday already?!?
But you're right - don't do nothing just because to do something isn't perfect.
In that line, a national holiday for voting would encourage voting. As such, all the groups pushing voter suppression would be against a holiday.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/e...
So yes, it's reasonable to say that the cohort that Trump made the largest gains with (i.e., lower income brackets) is his "voter base."