Would it be our first officially mandated holiday? I know other countries have them.. but I don't think we do. We also have the shortest average vacations of any developed nation. It would make sense to extend vacation time bacause the lack of time that parents have to spend with their kids is destroying marriages and families.. and making people not want to have children..

*Dems also need to push to MAKE OFFSHORING JOBS ILLEGAL.. and anything else that will help Americans make the most of the remaining years before technology replaces them... Remember Moore's Law.. computing power doubles every 18 months for a given amount of money.. That means that many robotics and decision-support technologies that are not feasible now will be soon.

So, given the work-free future looming.. Americans  will need to save lots of money, since its clear that they can't turn to the government for help...

Meanwhile, the Dems are happily going along with job exportation.. and not coming down on illegal immigration.. If illegal immigration was stopped.. then salaries for those low end jobs would rise to the point that a person could perhaps live off of them.. And a domestic robotics industry would become more viable.. Right now, the high wage countries have a jump on us in robotics, because it makes more sense for them.. but we are addicted to the illegal immigrants and their providing of cheap, disposable labor. Thats cruel to them, as well as to us. They need to go home and raise wages in their countries. And save money..Before technology takes those jobs away too.. (it will..just as it will here)

For example, if you had five people in the electorate (named Person A-E) and they begun with the following income in 1976 {A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5} and suppose only A, D and E voted year after year.  If by now their incomes were the following {A=1.5, B=3, C=4.5, D=8, E=12} then the ratio of median national income vs electorate income would have risen from 3:4 to 4.5:8.

This shows that the effect you track (i.e. rising median electorate income vs. median national income) is not necessarily due to any change in voting behavior, so you cannot infer much about voting behavior given the data set you presented.  
                   

In 1988, Pivens and Cloward wrote the first version of this book (without "Still" in the title), and they helped spark the drive to increase registration via the Motor Voter Bill.  This book tells the story leading up to the first verion, and then looks at what happened with the struggle they helped to spark, and how and why t fell short.  Whether or not you agree with their entire analysis, you owe it to yourself to read this book to know what some of the hard problems are, as well as the long-term history.

In the end, Piverns and Cloward argue, the shrunken electorate is a self-perpetuating entity.  Excluding mostly poor people from the political process keeps their issues off the table, which keeps them away from the voting booth.  Political scientists can then turn around, and claim that they don't differ significantly from voters, so there's not really a problem there. But Pivens and Cloward argue that the measures of opinion being used are themselves the product of a political process that excludes the poor.  If they were politically engaged, different measure would appear as a result of the political process.

There is support for this view from other sources using other approaches to analyzing public opinion. For example, the book Reading Mixed Signals : Ambivalence in American Public Opinion about Governmentby Albert H. Cantril and Susan Davis Cantril show that likely voters are almost evenly split between critics (45%) and supporters (46%) of government spending, but that unlikely/non-voters are overwhelmingly supporters (53%) rather than critics (32%).

But it seems there is something vital lacking in the discussion. People are more likely to vote if they feel that doing so will address their concerns and improve their quality of life.

For decades, the needs of the poor and the disenfranchised have been minimized or ignored by both parties, even when they are given lip service at election time. Because people are poor, it doesn't make them stupid. If there is nothing to choose between parties, why bother to vote?

If a party wants to gain the loyalty and the votes of a given group, they need to show by action that they are willing to hear and support that group.

Here's the problem.  Most of those people know they are being screwed, but they don't know who is doing it. They are not politically informed.   They think that it is just "politicians" who are treating them badly and so they don't vote.  Some of them have other problems:  ie., unreliable transportation (we helped them get to the polls or at least offered and gave our phone numbers) or especially with regard to women, who are much more likely to vote Democratic, lots of little kids who make getting to the polls difficult.

If you want to get more turnout from the poor, you need to help them get to the polls and help them understand that it is NOT the Republicans they should be voting for, even if their preacher tells them that it is.   They can be easily convinced, but you have to make an effort.   If all the people who are going to DC would canvas in their counties -- (we have people going out even now this far from an election) it could make a huge difference. It's far less threatening than it sounds like to knock on strangers' doors. After you've done it a few times, it starts to be enjoyable.  It especially helps if you can get your local Democratic party to try to help these people in other ways.  Do they need somebody to come and fix the broken down playground across the street? Organize that for them.  Make them feel like somebody cares about their problems.

The other thing is to work politially to re-enfranchise people who have been convicted of minor crimes (ie., drugs).  We ran into several groups of young men, all of whom were ashamed to tell us and upset that they had been in trouble with the law and had been disenfranchised.  They all wanted to vote and would have but we tried and found out that our state wouldn't let them.

To get poor people to vote, you have to understand where they are coming from and what their problems are.  It's like New Orleans. It's not enough to sit back in your comfortable house and pontificate about why the poor don't get in their cars and whip out their checkbooks and stay in a nice safe Holiday Inn somewhere else.  they have no money, they have no resources, they have no one to help them and they don't understand what is going on.  If you can help them with things, they will vote. Helping them vote is one of the best things you can do for this country.

With a quick search you could
surely find research showing
that more people vote AGAINST
a candidate that they dislike than
vote FOR a candidate they support.

Rethugs are expert at demonizing
Democrats and getting out voters
who hate us, but we lack similar skills.