{"id":176686,"date":"2020-04-14T17:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T22:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/04\/14\/five-down-45-states-to-go\/"},"modified":"2020-04-14T17:57:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T22:57:00","slug":"five-down-45-states-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/04\/14\/five-down-45-states-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Down, 45 States to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Governor Ralph Northam just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/04\/12\/politics\/virginia-election-day-holiday-early-voting\/index.html\">signed a law making election day a holiday and creating an easy path to vote by mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, making voting easier and more convenient is something that Republicans hate with a passion, they have been practicing aggressive voter suppression since before Reagan was President, but this is a good thing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Sunday that he signed a series of new measures into law aimed at expanding access to voting in the commonwealth.<\/p>\n<p>The new legislation will establish Election Day as a holiday, remove the requirement that voters show a photo ID prior to casting a ballot and, expand early voting to be allowed 45 days before an election without a stated reason.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder,&#8221; Northam said in a statement. &#8220;No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard. I&#8217;m proud to sign these bills into law.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Several states and cities have already made Election Day a civic holiday, including Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky and New York. State offices typically close, though it depends on the state whether employees are entitled to paid time off to vote.<\/p>\n<p>Proponents say making Election Day a holiday could improve voter turnout. But Election Day may not become a federal holiday anytime soon &#8212; it&#8217;s drawn deep division along party lines.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The new legislation also repeals the current Lee-Jackson day holiday which honored Robert E. Lee and Thomas &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson as &#8220;defenders of causes.&#8221; Both men owned slaves and fought to preserve slavery in the US.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Making voting easier <b>AND<\/b> offering a big f%$# you to the folks who want to lionize Civil War traitors.<\/p>\n<p>Two snaps up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Governor Ralph Northam just signed a law making election day a holiday and creating an easy path to vote by mail. Needless to say, making voting easier and more convenient is something that Republicans hate with a passion, they have been practicing aggressive voter suppression since before Reagan was President, but this is a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[413,449,639,584],"class_list":["post-176686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-civil-rights","tag-legislation","tag-voting","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}