Here's something we can all support. One of the barriers to people voting has always been the amount of time it takes to go, wait, vote, and come back to work. While your employer must give you three hours in which to do so, yesterday there were people waiting upwards of five hours in lines across the country. A national--Federal--holiday on Election Day would go a long way towards solving this problem, while increasing the voter turnout, and also increasing the number of polling volunteers needed to keep up.

Downsides? Not many, unless you are part of the political machine that tries hard to target specific demographics (e.g., Cuban-Americans living in Miami) and roots against massive voter turnout (though the CW that turnout helps Democrats seems to have been turned on its head this year). Some people argue that a new Federal Holiday would hurt business, but the solution would be to move another Federal Holiday to Election Day... say President's Day (third Monday in February), or Veteran's Day (Nov. 11).

As it turns out, there is a bill in the Senate to do this. [S.726](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:SN00726:), sponsored by Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and cosponsored by Richard Durbin (D-IL), John Kerry (D-MA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Calr Levin (D-MI).

Please consider writing to your Congressional delegation in support of this bill, which appears to have stalled. (See reason above: political machine) You can find their addresses below.

See: [Full text of S.726](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.726: "Really short, essentially asks for a Federal holiday on Election Day in even numbered years")
and: [How to write Letters to Congress](http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa020199.htm "For tips on getting your letter noticed")
and: [This link to find and send e-mail to your Congress persons](http://www.mrsmith.com/index2.html "It's called Mr. Smith eMails Washington... cute")