Why Do We Vote On Tuesday? (1845)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s January 25th. This day in 1845, Congress passed a law designating that Americans would henceforth vote on “the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.”

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why that day was designated, and the many pitfalls that now exist around the fact that Election Day is only one day, and on a Tuesday.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in Esoterk political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day January 25, 1845 the 28th US Congress passed quote an act to establish a
0:19.3	uniform time for holding elections for electors of president and vice president in all the states of the union.
0:26.2	Which of course, that day, as we all know, was designated as, quote, the Tuesday after the first
0:32.0	Monday in November. Sure, why not the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
0:33.0	Sure, why not?
0:34.0	The Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
0:37.0	And here we are.
0:38.0	That is still to this day, election day.
0:40.0	So let's talk about how we got to that.
0:42.0	Let's ask that question why Tuesday here to answer as always Nicole
0:46.8	Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there
0:50.3	Hello Jody hey there. There's actually a grassroots group called and a bit of a
0:57.4	movement called Why Tuesday and it's one of these sort of voting reform groups that
1:00.9	has been asking this question for a while and advocating for
1:03.0	changes and so you know we should get to that because it's a real question but
1:06.7	before we describe why Tuesday in this law and what happened in 1845 to
1:10.6	solidify it I think it's important to know kind of what elections look like just before that in the 1840s because when you understand that you do get the impulse to say no we should just pick one day and make it pretty simple.
1:23.0	So the Constitution had kind of left deciding how elections were going to be run up to Congress,
1:30.0	especially for establishing a date for when presidential elections would happen.
1:35.0	And for a long time, it ran anywhere from like a couple of weeks to a month.
	...

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