Why the US vote on Tuesdays

Syzygys

Syzygys

As a mother, I am telling you
Valued Senior Member
I always wondered myself, so here it is:

"Tuesday was chosen as, in 1845, the United States was a predominantly agrarian society. Most people traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the Sabbath. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday and, as Wednesday was market day, Tuesday was chosen."

It is kind of sad that an obsolete, 160+ years old reason still alive and kicking. I thought Saturdays would make more sense. I guess some still care for the Sabbath...
 
All our elections are on Sat, Actually it CAN'T be on a weekday because state primary schools are used as polling boothes because the AEC doesn't have to rent them out then (they are already state owned land, they are distributed across the areas people live etc)

That said a lot of people work weekends too so if you work your boss MUST give you time to vote by law

Edit to add: we even have mobile polling booths which go into hospitals so patients can vote
 
What bugs me most about Tuesdays, that kids get a day off, so lots of parents have to find baby sitters, because it is a work day. On a Saturday, nobody else would use the schools.

Germany votes on Sundays...
 
Syzygys said:
What bugs me most about Tuesdays, that kids get a day off, so lots of parents have to find baby sitters, because it is a work day. On a Saturday, nobody else would use the schools.

Germany votes on Sundays...
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Where I live (New York), schools remain open.
 
There is early voting in many states now whereby you can vote 30 days before the election up until the election at certain locations that remain open for anyone during normal business hours and some weekends as well. Then we also have absentee ballots so if you can't get to the polls you can send your vote in before the elections happen.
 
Everything is true what you said, but it doesn't even show which side you are on this issue.... If you can vote early, there is nothing against a nice Saturday morning, not distrupting most people's workday....
 
It depends on which state you live in as to if it is a good idea or not. It does cost more to keep the polls open more time but helps with voting for anyone who might need the extra time to do so. It is OK if its not over done, to me, for some states have early voting starting 4 weeks ahead of the actual vote.
 
The point of the thread is, picking a weekend day is much better, then interrupting people's workday. It is also easier to find volunteers...
 
The main difficulty in changing the date is that it is set by 50 state laws, so to keep together, all states would have to agree and act at the same time.
 
So? For something like that it shouldn't be TOO, if you couldn't work together on something as simple and basic as that how do you work together on ANYTHING? Maybe you need something like COAG (council of Australian governments) which was put in place here for that very reason, to get the states and territories and the federal goverment to work together in areas which require consistent legaislation across various goverments

that being said though I find it odd tht your federal goverment doesn't control it's own federal elections
 
Buddha12 said:
It does cost more to keep the polls open more time but helps with voting for anyone who might need the extra time to do so.
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By voting early I meant earlier by a few days/weeks. So if a religious person has a problem with the Sabbath, he/she should vote early, on a Wendesday...
 
mathman said:
Where I live (New York), schools remain open.
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same in Detroit area. I don't think I've heard of an area where schools do close?
But I would suppose the same reason why elections don't happen during the week in australia (because they use the school facilities) is also why we still "care for the sabbath"... our polls are all churches here.
 
In Pennsylvania schools are always closed on Tuesday elections...
 
NightFall said:
same in Detroit area. I don't think I've heard of an area where schools do close?
But I would suppose the same reason why elections don't happen during the week in australia (because they use the school facilities) is also why we still "care for the sabbath"... our polls are all churches here.
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Actually I would say you have the order backwards there, we vote on sat because it's the most convenient time for most people and we use primary schools because they are closed, they are owned by state governments and they are scattered around the areas people live (which means there is probably a roughly equal distribution across electorates)
 
Syzygys said:
In Pennsylvania schools are always closed on Tuesday elections...
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i'll make that a slash in the tally.
tally, 1.
:p



Asguard said:
Actually I would say you have the order backwards there, we vote on sat because it's the most convenient time for most people and we use primary schools because they are closed, they are owned by state governments and they are scattered around the areas people live (which means there is probably a roughly equal distribution across electorates)
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must be missing something here, i don't see how that's conflicts with what i said.
 
I don't know the original reasoning, but over the years almost all of our national holidays have been adjusted to fall on Monday. So today it makes sense to hold elections on Tuesday.

You can't hold them on weekends. Many people vote because their employers give them the time off. They would not do it on their own time. Especially young people, who don't vote in large numbers as it is. They let us old folks do all the voting and then they complain that they don't like the way things are.

After the election, people who voted wear tags saying "I voted." Kids who didn't vote should wear tags saying "Duh!"
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
I don't know the original reasoning,
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Maybe you should read the very first post, that explained it....

You can't hold them on weekends.They would not do it on their own time.
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So American people care that much about voting??? Maybe you are right, but they still could vote early (as in earlier that week)

Especially young people, who don't vote in large numbers as it is.
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As much as voting is useless, let's assume it ins't. Then fuck young people. They are crying about the drinking age being 21, but when they could change it by voting, they have better things to do? Do we really have to accomodate every lazy idiot???? (again, this rant is for a real voting system, not the current one)

They let us old folks do all the voting and then they complain that they don't like the way things are.
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Then double fuck them. And anyway, why would you give more power to a lazy generation??
 
FR your kidding right? Your saying that a process which here takes 10-15 min, is done locally to the point most people walk to there polling station, becomes like a community fair with people selling sausages and drinks, cakes, craft items for charity (candates representives are prevented from being a certain distance from the booths by a blue line but the community groups selling things aren't), which is the ONLY civic responsibility we as a society expect of people in return for all the benifits they recive and yet you think if it was sat people wouldn't turn up.
 
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