Why aren’t we voting on the first weekend in November when most people are not working and, if it were conducted on both Saturday and Sunday, everyone would have easier access and a better opportunity to go to the polls?

At the very least, we could make the first Tuesday in November a national holiday every two years. That wouldn’t be hard, and it’s certainly more necessary than holidays for Columbus Day, the birthdays of historically prominent figures, and so forth.

For ages, I thought it was the Constitution that specified the first Tuesday of November as the day for national elections, but I was wrong. Thanks to modern technology I was able to find out things in no time.

First of all, I have the entire Constitution in PDF computer format. As anyone who uses this program knows, it’s a simple matter to search any document for specific words. So I typed “Tuesday” into the search box and guess what. The word Tuesday doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution, nowhere at all, whether in regard to voting or anything else. It just isn’t there.

Searching elsewhere, I found a site called “calendar-updates.com” that claimed “the Tuesday after the first Monday in November was initially established in 1845 (US Code Title 3, Chapter 1) for the appointment of Presidential electors in every fourth year. US Codes Title 2, Chapter 1, Section 7 established this date for electing U.S. Representatives in even numbered years in 1875. Finally, US Code Title 2, Chapter 1 established this date as the time for electing U.S. Senators in 1914.”

This means that Congress or the Administration could change elections to the first full weekend in November or make the “first Tuesday following Monday” a holiday anytime they wanted. That would certainly seem to be an easy way to increase voter participation.

Instead, our elected representatives have done nothing.