We have an orange-hued, bigoted, loud mouth, reality star running for president. My fellow liberals, we need to go vote. We can’t let this guy make it to the White House.
President Obama would like to help us with this. He is trying to make the election day a holiday, so more people can get to the polls.
A student at Rutgers got the opportunity to interview the president. When asked about automatically registering voters and holding polls on weekends or holidays, Obama said:
“We are the only advanced democracy that makes it deliberately difficult for people to vote. And some of it has to do with the nature of our history and our Constitution, where we allow individual states to determine their own processes for structuring elections within certain boundaries.”
Oregon is moving to set up automatic voter registration which will also help more people get to the polls. When you get your license in that state, you will be automatically registered to vote. They will send a form in the mail, so you can opt-out if you choose to.
Additionally, Hillary Clinton has even brought up giving voting rights to felons when they have completed their sentence. This would give a voice to hundreds of thousands of people.
Obama is not the only one that has spoken out in favor of an election day holiday. Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to declare election day “Democracy Day.” This holiday may not cure all of the challenges surrounding election day, but it is a great start. More people should be able to vote and not have to worry about missing work. We can’t have a strong democracy when sixty percent of us don’t vote.
An organization called Brave New Films has made a PSA for it:
Featured image by Theresa Thompson via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
