It would benefit one political party over the other

The argument

Election day should not be turned into a national holiday because doing so would favour one party over the other — an argument Republicans are said to make, though rarely out loud, which is itself part of the claim being described here. The reasoning starts from a premise about turnout. Republicans are more likely to benefit when fewer people vote, and proponents point out that lowering turnout was an alleged strategy of the Trump campaign in 2016, aimed at making Hillary Clinton an unattractive candidate and driving down participation. Survey evidence is offered for why the party alignment runs that way: according to a Pew Research Survey, people who do not vote are generally more likely to support Democrats when they do, with 51% of nonvoters leaning towards the Democrats compared to 30% leaning towards the GOP. If the pool of people currently not voting tilts that heavily in one direction, then any measure that draws more of them to the polls has a predictable partisan effect regardless of how neutrally it is written. That is what makes the proposal something other than a procedural reform. Making election day a national holiday would likely increase voter turnout, and on these figures the increase would benefit the Democratic Party and harm the Republican Party — which means the parties' positions on it are not really disagreements about the convenience of voters. The argument's final move is to say so directly. On this account the Democratic Party does not advocate the holiday because it cares about making life easier for citizens to vote; its intentions are more self-serving, and a change that alters who turns out should be recognised as a change to the electoral outcome rather than to the electoral calendar.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Election day should not be made into a national holiday, not because Republicans want to encourage voter suppression, but rather because they believe there are larger issues. Turning Election Day into a national holiday would supposedly help to increase voter turnout. But Republicans don’t believe voter turnout is the issue that the government should be working to solve. Republicans want to solve the issue of voter fraud, and turning election day into a national holiday won't solve that problem. According to a survey that asked people what they think the biggest problem related to voting was, there was a large split. 72% of Republicans polled saying voting illegally is a larger problem, while 71% of Democrats polled said the same thing about voter suppression. Election day does not need to be a national holiday because people are worried about the issue of voter fraud. Voter fraud is not something that can be solved by turning election day into a federal holiday.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Nonvoters' stated leanings do not predict how they would vote if they turned out, since the group is defined by not voting — and the survey describes a national sample rather than the marginal voters a single day off work would actually add. [Rejecting P2] That a change would advantage one party is a claim about consequences, not about whether it is right; the same reasoning would count against any measure making voting easier, and the argument's conclusion is offered on behalf of the party it says would lose.