Election Day Off

foxnews.com has a story up today regarding a call by Barack Obama for people to ask for the day off on Nov. 4, 2008.

Whether you want to vote for Senator Obama for President  or not isn’t really the point.  This election is historical.  The election may well be close with extremely high voter turn out.  Americans should not be denied the opportunity to work in various election-related activities and to vote simply because they have to work.

But, the McCain campaign is reported to have responded to the call with “…Barack Obama believes that you can’t ‘make history’ by doing your job, or going to school, or caring for your kids. Apparently Barack Obama thinks the only way Americans can make history is by voting…”  The comments to the article, as one would expect on the Fox News web site lean mostly towards the sentiment expressed by the McCain campaign … that staying going to work is the way to make history.

The call by the Obama campaign is a perfectly reasonable one.  In fact, holidays for the purpose of voting in an election are fairly common world-wide.  Some countries all schedule election days to coincide with the weekly “day of rest.”

Perhaps it is time for America to consider a national holiday for elections.