How are you going to vote on Tuesday, Nov. 6? Will you squeeze your visit to the polls between dropping the kids off and going to work? Maybe you’ll fit it in between your commute home and getting dinner together? Or, perhaps like 64 percent of Americans in the 2014 midterm elections, you won’t vote at all.
In these deeply divided times, when Americans seem to disagree on just about everything in politics, perhaps we can agree that everyone should vote. Together with more than 200 other political scientists, we have endorsed an effort to make that first Tuesday in November a national holiday. We could name it Citizen Day, because that is the day Americans participate in the most basic act of our democracy: We cast our votes for those who will protect our interests and work for our wishes in politics.
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Citizen Day would transform voting from a chore that some of us perform into a celebration of the longest lasting democracy on earth. It would be a day for all of us to learn about our remarkable system of governance, to help make it work better and to honor it together.