Happy Election Day!

Today is Election Day, the foundation of the liberal democratic experiment, America's shining gift to the rest of the world, right ahead of the fast-food cheeseburger. But why today? Why not next week? Or in September? Or on a weekend? "Election Day is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This is because having it on the first Thursday after the second Saturday in November would be silly," explains "America (The Book)", funnyman Jon Stewart's yuk-filled look back at American history, probably the funniest since "Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States."

Ha ha, OK, very funny, Mr. Stewart. But seriously, why?

To the history books!

From the AP
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The U.S. Constitution said nothing about the first Tuesday after the first Monday; only that America's electors -- that is, the electoral college -- vote for the office of the U.S. presidency on a single day. It wasn't until 1845 when Congress settled on the FTATFM rule. November was allegedly chosen for uniform Election Day because the fall harvest should have been over by then (lots of stuff revolved around the agricultural schedule back then; it's the same reason public school students have the summer off), "and winter has not yet made the roads impassable," said Ohio Rep. Alexander Duncan, who helped write the law. The FTATFM wording guarantees that Election Day will never fall on Nov. 1, which is All Saints' Day, a holiday in the Roman Catholic church. And why Tuesday? That gave voters a full day -- Monday -- to travel to the polling place in the county seat (Sunday was out of the question, because religious folks couldn't travel on that day, on account of the Sabbath). Most states and counties now hold their off-year elections on the FTATFM, for convenience, even though it's not required by federal law.

What about pre-1845?

There was no set day for presidential elections. Each state scheduled its own election day.

Election Trivia, Part I

Our first American, post-U.S. Constitution election happened in 1789, and it wasn't much of an election, to be perfectly honest with you. George Washington essentially ran unopposed, because there was wide agreement among statesmen and the general population that he was the most fit for the highest office in the land. (It's hard to imagine such agreement today. We went out to lunch last week, and we couldn't even agree on pizza toppings.) Turnout was abysmal, as you may imagine for a fledgling democracy with few paved roads. Less than 2 percent of the American population -- which stood at 2.4 million citizens and 600,000 slaves -- voted, for a final tally of 38,000 or so. The history books say nothing about hanging chads or butterfly ballots, so we'll assume that this election was relatively free of controversy.

Election Trivia, Part II

Be ready the next time some history snot tries testing you with this trick question: Who was the 12th president of the United States. When you answer, "Zachary Taylor," he'll laugh in his condescending way and say, "No, it was David Rice Atchison," at which point you have the Morning File's permission to punch the guy straight in the nose. Who's David Rice Atchison? He was president pro tempore of the Senate in 1849, the same year that President James K. Polk was succeeded by Zachary Taylor. The story goes, President Polk's term expired on Sunday, March 4, 1849. President Taylor was supposed to be sworn in that day, but he refused, because of the Sabbath, postponing his inauguration for a full day. Which means that, for a day, the United States appears to have been without a president. But historians abhor a vacuum, and upon retroactive review, noticed that the rules of presidential succession from that era say that the president pro tem of the Senate would act as president, if the president and the vice president were unable to.

So?

So some historians have filled that one-day gap with the senator from Missouri. But there are problems with that thinking, according to the Urban Legends Reference Pages, which cited several books on presidential history as evidence. The first is that David Rice Atchison was never sworn in as president. Second, the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 says the line of succession kicks in if the office is vacant by way of the "removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the President and Vice President." None of those criteria applied here.

Third, it's up to Congress to "[declare] what officer shall then act as President," which it declined to do for that one-day period. And fourth, Mr. Atchison himself has no recollection of having served as president, which is probably the sort of thing you'd remember, if only for resume purposes. "I went to bed. There had been two or three busy nights finishing up the work of the Senate, and I slept most of that Sunday," he later said in a St. Louis newspaper article.

Senatorial trivia

By the end of today, barring some goofy legal challenge or electronic voting machine wipeout, Pennsylvanians will have elected either Rick Santorum or Bob Casey to serve as our next full-term senator. Our first full-term senator? That was Robert Morris, for whom the Moon Township university is named. He signed the "Big Three" documents -- the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution -- and he was known as "Financier of the Revolution," for his role in keeping the American troops fed and clothed at a time when the treasury was empty. For his efforts as a patriot, as a pioneer of our American system of finance and later as a statesman, he eventually went broke and was imprisoned for three years. He probably would have preferred a thank-you card.