Called “Election Day”, the day of the popular vote to elect the new president of the United States is systematically held on a Tuesday in November. This year it will take place on Tuesday November 5.
It's a tradition that goes back almost 180 years and has been respected ever since. To understand why the American election systematically takes place on a Tuesday in November – November 5 this year – we have to go back in time and stop in 1845 with the law called “Uniform Tuesday Act“. Explanations.
In 1845, the American Congress decided to harmonize the conditions of the popular vote throughout the territory. At this time, specifies the historian specializing in “the beginnings of America” and professor at Northeastern University Jessica Linker, American society saw most of its economy focused on agriculture. For the authorities, it then seemed impossible to organize the elections in spring or summer; seasons in which cultivating fields is Americans’ number one priority. The editors of theUniform Tuesday Act” then choose fall, thereby avoiding voters having to face bad winter weather to vote.
And for good reason, to get to the voting booths located in large cities and state capitals, Americans sometimes traveled up to several hundred kilometers… on horseback. Which also forced lawmakers to take into account voters' travel time when choosing a date. It was therefore necessary to opt for a day without professional activity. However, according to Jessica Linker, it was unimaginable to divert the population from church on Sunday, the Lord's Day.
If it couldn't be Sunday, and Monday was largely travel, then Tuesday seemed like the best option.
A Tuesday yes, but after the first Monday in November
In view of the law already in force at the time, the “Election Day“(election day) must also take place 34 days before the vote of the electors, on December 17. Which explains this clarification in the text on the vote: it must take place “after the first Monday” of November.
This subtlety has another consequence. If November 1 is a Tuesday, then voting can only take place the following Tuesday. In 2016, for example, the election was held on Tuesday November 8, thus avoiding a vote on All Saints' Day.
A public holiday soon?
Although the vote by anticipation and by correspondence has become democratized, as Northeastern University political science professor Nicholas Beauchamp explains, voices are being raised to demand that a public holiday be decreed in order to facilitate voting and undermine a significant abstention rate. During the last American presidential election, abstention reached a record level of 34% (or more than 80 million votes out of the 239 million registered in total).
Others point to the fact that Tuesday is “lost” in the middle of the week while people are working. In 2016, many Americans regretted the perpetuation of a tradition that went against the way of life in current society. This was particularly the case for Bernie Sanders, then a candidate in the Democratic primary. According to him, the “Election Day” should be a public holiday “so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote.” In 2018, a study by the Pew Research Center indicated that 65% of Americans said they were in favor of creating a public holiday .
Is this the harbinger of the imminent death of this old tradition? There is nothing to confirm this. But, if in France “Tuesday in November” is a cultural mystery, across the Atlantic, it is becoming just as much so.
