Washington D.C. Republicans Extend Shabbat Voting Hours for Observant Jews
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
The Republican Party in Washington, D.C., is extending its primary hours to allow observant Jews to vote.
Patrick Mara, the director of the District of Columbia Republican Party, told the Washington Post in a report posted on the newspaper’s website Monday that the party would extend voting this Saturday to 9 p.m., five hours later than the scheduled finish.
Voting will move at 4 p.m. from a ballroom at the Loews Madison hotel to a smaller room in the same hotel. Those who vote after 4 will have to sign a document swearing they are observant Jews.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld had made representations to the party about the Saturday voting, saying it would discriminate against voters among his congregants at Ohev Sholom, an Orthodox synagogue in the district.
Both parties have run or are set to run Saturday nominating contests in 11 states and a number of territories. Jewish groups last month complained to the Nevada state Democratic Party about its Saturday caucuses, which effectively excluded Sabbath-observant Jews in a state with a substantial Jewish community.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
