Why Is Election Day on a Tuesday in November?

Federal law in the United States requires that the presidential election be held every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. In modern society that seems like an arbitrary time to hold an election, but it made a lot of sense in the 1800s.In the early decades of the United States, the date for the election of the president would be set by the individual states.Those various election days, however, almost always fell in November.

The reason was simple: under an early federal law, the electors for the electoral college were to meet in the individual states on the first Wednesday of December. And according to a 1792 federal law, the elections in the states (which would choose the electors) had to be held within a 34-day period before that day.

Beyond meeting legal requirements, holding elections in November made good sense in an agrarian society, as the harvest would have been concluded. And the harshest winter weather would not have arrived, which was a consideration for those who had to travel to a polling place.

In a practical sense, having the presidential electionheld on different days in different states was not a major concern in the early decades of the 1800s. Communication was slow, and when it took days or weeks for election results to become known it didn't matter if states held elections at different times.

As communication improved with the introduction of the railroad and the telegraph, it seemed obvious that election results in one state might influence the voting yet to occur in another.

And as transportation improved, there was also a fear that voters could travel from state to state and participate in multiple elections. In the early 1840s Congress decided to make a standardized date for holding presidential elections across the country.

Congress Standardized Election Day in 1845

In 1845 Congress passed a law establishing that the day for choosing presidential electors (in other words, the day for the popular vote that would determine the electors of the electoral congress) would be every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

That formulation was chosen to fall within the time frame determined by the aforementioned 1792 law.

And making the election the first Tuesday after the first Monday also ensured that the election would never be held on November 1, which is All Saints Day, a Catholic holy day of obligation. There is also a legend that merchants in the 1800s tended to do their bookkeeping on the first day of the month, and scheduling an important election on that day might interfere with business.