ETHAN WATSON: Make Election Day A Federal Holiday

Our calendars are full of useless holidays. Just last month, 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 is difficult to quantify how much voting machines or absentee ballots have increased the risk of election-rigging, if at all, it is 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.