Vic Miller's Commentary

Election Day a national holiday?

Posted: Oct 11, 2012 8:34 AM by Vic Miller

I saw my friend Slab Marble recently and he said he was having a bad day. He told me had been conned into putting up a political candidates yard sign in his yard and while attempting to pound it into his lawn he smashed his hand with the hammer. He figured it was the candidates fault and decided not to vote for him.

He then asked me what I thought of the idea of making Election Day a national holiday. I said I hadn't thought about it recently since the movement seems to have lost much of its momentum. A lot of us now use absentee ballots and no longer vote on Election Day.

Slab declared he always felt declaring Election Day a national holiday wouldn't really accomplish a heck of a lot. He said the people who had been voting all along would continue to vote, and people who hadn't been voting still wouldn't vote.

I told him he was a cynic, and he told me he was a realist. Slab said a lot of do gooders with chicken noodle soup in their brain cavities refuse to concede that not everyone has an interest in voting.

He added that the thing that fries his mind is that some of these crusaders are apparently convinced that the people who haven't been voting and for the most part don't have a clue as to what's going on, somehow have a great deal to contribute to the process. And if they could just get these people to the polls, this tidal wave of untapped collective wisdom would result in better government.

I told him that I had to agree it was probably a stretch to assume that if the people who haven't been voting would just vote the end result would be better government and that in all likelihood the only thing that will bring about better government is to have better candidates.

As we parted, Slab told me he just wished they'd made Election Day a national holiday forty years ago. I said it was commendable that he would have liked a national holiday so he could go and vote. Slab said he actually would have used the holiday to go deer hunting.

Vic Miller