With Election Day just hours away, plenty of Americans are once again stumbling on the question they have every year (or every four years): Why Tuesdays?
It’s inconvenient and, for many of us, a difficult to get the time to do it. As Last Week Tonight explains, this time you can blame the farmers (unlike with Daylight Saving Time). You can thank a more than 170-year-old law for giving us the Election Day we know today—one that, with modern technology, doesn’t do much anymore aside from making voters take time out of work or their home lives or wait in line to vote early.
Until politicians move Election Day to a weekend, extend early voting, or make Election Day a national holiday, we’ll continue to have issues with the actual date of Election Day—and question why we don’t change it.