Let Your People Vote
My own state requires that employers provide 2hrs off to vote, but some employers are saying they can’t comply, because they can’t afford to lose the coverage. Bullshit. If that’s the case, they can’t afford other national holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. “I can’t afford it” is another way of saying “it’s not high among my priorities.”
On top of that, 2hrs may not be enough, given the lines in poorer neighborhoods (like the lines at the post office, they’re longer the farther you get from the cul de sac). And again, while a salaried worker or a desk worker may be able to be flexible, make up the time, or whatever, a poor hourly worker may have to leave the lines without voting just to get back to work on time, or risk getting written up or fired.
Votes, like so much else, belong to the everyone but the poor.
Personally, I don’t vote. I’m not interested in US politics, except as an external, cultural phenomenon. But depriving the poor of a vote, while the middle class, with “nicer” jobs or “Joe the plumber” self-employment can do their civic duty, is obscene. If you’re an employer, however small, and you’re thinking like Mr. “Can’t afford it”, I’ll say this to you: If you’ve got any ethical and moral sense - hell, if you’re worried about them faking the time, and you’ve got any sense - you’ll drive your people to the polls if they want to go.
It’s fundamentally contrary to the American legal and political system, and to ethics and morality, to deprive the poor of a vote in this society, and businesses that reap the rewards of existing in it should be shamed, boycotted, spat upon, and driven out, who do not provide adequate and reasonable means to ensure all their employees may vote.
If they really don’t want to vote, our system provides for that too. More power to them. But if they do, and you’re holding them back, you’ve blasphemed against the thing from which you draw your existence and your own livelihood, and may it turn on you and devour you accordingly.
The poor are one of the chief reasons, ends, and meanings of work. To relieve, uphold, and sustain the poor is the singular priviledge and responsibility of those who receive the blessings of prosperity. This is, perhaps, never more clearly played out than on election day on which, at least ostensibly, the poor are allowed to determine their destiny. Work ensures this, and work must defend and protect this.
