Voting as a National Holiday in OECD Countries: We’re Number 28

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is Election Day in the United States. Most votes are cast that day, but thirty-eight states provide for a form of early voting; some of that voting can start as early as late September, some six weeks before the Election Day.

But Election Day falls on a workday for most Americans. Why not make Election Day a national holiday or move it to a Saturday or Sunday? Thirteen states (as of 2018) give workers the day off on Election Day; and more than twenty states require employers to give their workers time off (usually one or two hours) to cast their votes. Business leaders have stepped in. For example, in advance of the 2020 presidential election, some 600 companies—such as, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Gap, J. Crew, and JPMorgan Chase—gave employees paid time off to vote on Election Day.

Nearly all the OECD countries have adapted weekend voting; the United States is just one of nine countries (out of the 38 in the OECD) that have national voting day during the week, and two of those countries—Israel and South Korea—have made that day a national holiday.

Sources: MakeTimetoVote.org, https://www.maketimetovote.org; Drew DeSilver, “Weekday Elections Set the US Apart from Many Other Advanced Democracies,” Pew Research Center, November 6, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/06/weekday-elections-set-the-u-s-apart-from-many-other-advanced-democracies/