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As implied by its name, Election Day is, well, a single day. That wasn't always the case, however: States used to hold elections whenever they wanted within a 34-day period leading up to the first Wednesday in December. This ultimately created some issues, as you might imagine — early voting results ended up holding too much sway over late-deciding voters, for one thing. The current date was implemented by the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845, and federal elections now occur every two years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
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It's a factGeorge Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the U.S., but it took a while — from December 15, 1788, to January 10, 1789, to be precise. Washington wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of being President but answered the call “in obedience to the public summons.”
That may sound arbitrary at first, but the date was chosen quite deliberately. American society was much more agrarian in the mid-19th century than it is today, and it took a full day of traveling for many to reach their polling place. Church made weekends impractical, and Wednesday was market day for farmers, so Tuesday proved ideal. November, meanwhile, worked because weather was still fairly mild, and the harvest was complete by then.
The current process isn’t perfect, of course. U.S. elections tend to have lower turnout than those of most other developed nations, and there have been calls for decades to make Election Day a national holiday. A 2018 poll found that 65% of Americans favored the idea, though there’s been little legislative movement on the proposal. Should it ever be put to a vote, you know when it will be held.
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President ______ never voted prior to his own election.
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President Zachary Taylor never voted prior to his own election.
George Washington spent an entire campaign budget on booze.
Before he was the first President, George Washington was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1758 until 1775. He actually lost his first election and “attributed his defeat to his failure to provide enough alcohol for the voters,” according to author Daniel Okrent. At the time, it was common for candidates to woo voters by plying them with food and liquor. Washington avoided the same mistake during his second run, spending his entire campaign budget on 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal served to 391 voters — nearly a half-gallon per voter. (He even rolled barrels of liquor to polling places on Election Day, a custom in Virginia at the time.) The practice was widespread despite being technically illegal, and was known as “swilling the planters with bumbo.”
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
