(Lea esta historia en español vía Telemundo Chicago aquí)
The 2022 midterm elections are now less than a month away, but if you’ve wondered why Americans vote in early November, there are a series of interesting explanations.
In 2022, Election Day will fall on Nov. 8, making the second time in the last four election cycles that balloting has occurred on that date.
Under federal law, Election Day falls on the “first Tuesday after the first Monday of November,” and that selection wasn’t an accident.
To start, the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 established the “first Tuesday after the first Monday” as Election Day, putting an end to the somewhat-chaotic nature of elections held prior to that date.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, prior to the 1845 legislation states could hold their elections on any date that they wanted prior to the first Wednesday of December, when presidential electors had to be seated.
Once the telegraph was invented, officials didn’t want voters to be swayed by the results in different states, and as a result, they established a uniform election date for the entire nation.
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In addition to uniformity, the decision to hold elections on the “first Tuesday following the first Monday” of November, rather than simply the first Tuesday of the month, was also made deliberately.
According to Britannica and other sources, Congress wanted to respect Christians who observed All Saints Day, which occurs on Nov. 1. As a result, Election Day wasn’t allowed to fall on that date.
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The encyclopedia also says that consideration was given to merchants who used the first day of the month to settle accounts for the previous month, and for whom voting on the first of the month would cause a difficult challenge to overcome.
There was even a reason why Congress chose Tuesday as Election Day. In an interview with NPR, Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that lawmakers assumed that it would take a day of travel for some voters to make it to their respective polling places, and they didn’t want to force those voters to travel on Sunday, which would hinder those wanting to attend church services.
As a result, they established Tuesday as the date for the election, allowing residents to travel on Mondays and to return home by Wednesdays, when farmers would typically take their crops to market places, according to Ritchie.
