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Should election day be a national holiday?
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It would benefit one political party over the other

From the President of the United States to down the list of GOP politicians, Republicans have gotten stunningly candid about their electoral playbook and their desire to block increased voter turnout. Making election day a national holiday would benefit the Democrats.

The Argument

Election day should not be turned into a national holiday because it would favor one party over the other. This is an unspoken argument made by Republicans. Republicans are more likely to benefit when fewer people vote. Lowering voter turnout was even an alleged strategy of the Trump campaign in 2016 to make Hillary Clinton an unattractive candidate and drive down turnout.[1] According to a Pew Research Survey, people who don’t vote are generally more likely to support Democrats when they do. 51% of nonvoters lean towards Democrats, compared to the 30% that lean towards the GOP.[2] The Democratic Party does not really care about making life easier for citizens to vote; their true intentions are more self-serving. Making election day a national holiday would likely increase voter turnout, but it would benefit of the Democratic Party and likely harm the Republican Party.

Counter arguments

Election day should not be made into a national holiday, not because Republicans want to encourage voter suppression, but rather because they believe there are larger issues. Turning Election Day into a national holiday would supposedly help to increase voter turnout. But Republicans don’t believe voter turnout is the issue that the government should be working to solve. Republicans want to solve the issue of voter fraud, and turning election day into a national holiday won't solve that problem. According to a survey that asked people what they think the biggest problem related to voting was, there was a large split. 72% of Republicans polled saying voting illegally is a larger problem, while 71% of Democrats polled said the same thing about voter suppression. Election day does not need to be a national holiday because people are worried about the issue of voter fraud. Voter fraud is not something that can be solved by turning election day into a federal holiday.

Proponents

Premises

Rejecting the premises

References

  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/29/what-we-know-about-efforts-by-trumps-2016-campaign-suppress-black-votes/
  2. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/10/31/the-party-of-nonvoters-2/
This page was last edited on Tuesday, 20 Oct 2020 at 22:35 UTC

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