Democracy, vacation and other dangerous ideas

If anything unsettles the American establishment more than letting too many people vote, it’s giving them too much time off. The push to make Election Day a holiday combines these twin terrors. Those behind the monstrous idea are plotting not only to put “taxpayers on the hook for generous new benefits for federal bureaucrats,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell glowered recently, but also to effect a “political power grab.” It was a classic example of the Kinsley gaffe: By admitting that he doesn’t want more people to vote, McConnell accidentally told the truth.

For those who also share McConnell’s Dickensian loathing for granting anyone another holiday, the city of Sandusky, Ohio, devised an elegant solution: It’s giving municipal employees a new Election Day holiday while taking away a fall celebration rapidly falling from favor, Columbus Day. What a clever compromise: European subjugation gives way to democratic participation, and, in a nod to the subjugators, no one gains a day off.

Josh Gohlke, editorial writer