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Comment by rainsford | Hacker News Reader

Where I live in the US, you have a week before election day to vote in-person early and any voter can vote by mail. Plus the polls are open for 13 hours on election day itself.

I'm all for making sure everyone has the opportunity to vote, but I'm not convinced there are very many people who can't make any of those options work but who could vote if election day was during the weekend.

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Where I live in the US, everyone with any DMV interaction is automatically registered to vote, and receives a ballot in the mail a few weeks before election day with a nonpartisan voters handbook that explains issues, allows candidates to give written statements, and allows anyone to publish a for/against argument for the cost of printing – about $100.

We sit at the dining room table, do research, and vote gradually over the course of 7-10 days. Ballots can then be mailed in (with a signature-bearing outer envelope that's stripped away before votes are counted), or dropped off at a library or designated polling place all the way up until election day.

Having to take time off of work and physically go to a polling place with a handful of notes is insane to me.

I'm sure there is a significant amount of people in the US who work two shifts per day. I get the impression this is rather common in the lower to lower middle class. Voting seems hard for these people. But someone here said US companies have to give you time off to go vote, and if this is true then there are no impediments and these people can vote anyway, even though their paycheck for that day is cut by some amount. Some may choose not to, though, even though they beleive in democracy.

Findlaw[0] has a state by state breakdown of laws regarding the time off. Some require paid leave while others aren't. Rather than a federal voting holiday (which brings its own headaches), lobby your local legislature to add language to make the leave paid. It's more likely to happen in the states that don't have it than it is to happen federally.

[0] http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html

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