Why is election day always on a tuesday

Beyond meeting legal requirements, holding elections in November made good sense in an agrarian society. By November the harvest was concluded and the harshest winter weather hadn't arrived, a major consideration for those who had to travel to a polling place, such as a county seat.

Holding the presidential election on different days in different states wasn't a major concern in the early decades of the s when news traveled only as fast as a man on horseback or a ship could carry it and it took days or weeks for election results to become known.

The people voting in New Jersey, for example, couldn't be influenced by knowing who had won the presidential balloting in Maine or Georgia. In the s, that all changed. With the building of railroads, transporting mail and newspapers became much speedier. But what really changed society was the emergence of the telegraph. With news traveling between cities within minutes, it became obvious that election results in one state might influence voting that was still open in another state.

As transportation improved, there was another fear: Voters conceivably could travel from state to state, participating in multiple elections. In an era when political machines such as New York's Tammany Hall were often suspected of rigging elections, that was a serious concern.

So in the early s, Congress set a single date for holding presidential elections across the country. In , Congress passed a law establishing that the day for choosing presidential electors the day for the popular vote that would determine the electors of the Electoral College would be every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

That was in line with the time frame set by the law. Making the election the first Tuesday after the first Monday also ensured that the election would never be held on Nov. There is also a legend that merchants in the s tended to do their bookkeeping on the first day of the month, and scheduling an important election on that day might interfere with business.

The first presidential election in accordance with the new law was held on Nov. The choice of Tuesday is most likely because elections in the s were generally held at county seats, and people in outlying areas would have to travel from their farms into town to vote. Tuesday was chosen so people could begin their travels on a Monday, avoiding travel on the Sunday Sabbath.

Holding important national elections on a weekday seems anachronistic in the modern world, and there's a concern that Tuesday voting creates obstacles and discourages participation. Many people can't take off work to vote though in 30 states , you can , and they might find themselves waiting in long lines to vote in the evening.

News reports that routinely show citizens of other countries voting on more convenient days, such as Saturday, tend to make Americans wonder why the voting laws can't be changed to reflect the modern era. In the s, most citizens worked as farmers and lived far from their polling place. Since people often traveled at least a day to vote, lawmakers needed to allow a two-day window for Election Day. Weekends were impractical, since most people spent Sundays in church, and Wednesday was market day for farmers.

With this in mind, Tuesday was selected as the first and most convenient day of the week to hold elections. Farm culture also explains why Election Day always falls in November. Spring and early summer elections were thought to interfere with the planting season, and late summer and early fall elections overlapped with the harvest. That left the late fall month of November—after the harvest was complete, but before the arrival of harsh winter weather—as the best choice.

And will we ever dispense with voting on a weekday? In fact, for a significant chunk of early U. In , Congress decided to choose a fixed day to hold elections. But in the middle of the 19th century, the United States was a largely agrarian society. Mondays couldn't be voting day, because that might require people to travel on a Sunday, the Sabbath, and Wednesday couldn't be voting day, because it was traditionally market day, NPR reported.