In 1845, the United States was largely an agrarian society. Farmers often needed a full day to travel by horse-drawn vehicles to the county seat to vote. Tuesday was established as election day because it did not interfere with the Biblical Sabbath or with market day, which was on Wednesday in many towns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Day_(United_States)

That's great, but it's not 1845, and I know that not all Americans are Constitutional fundamentalist nutjobs. :-)

So why not Saturday? That article doesn't mention it.

Neither sabbath nor market day, yet still a weekend day. Or did people back then consider Saturday a regular work/week day too?

Not Saturday because it would, presumably, take that same whole day to get back.

And note that market day tended to be in the same town where you voted, so arriving a day early was much of a hardship.

I voted on Saturday, too. Some of the more enlightened states in the US allow voting by mail.

I have never figured out how voting by mail is possible. The case I'm interested in, a classic, is the husband dictacting to his wife who to vote for.

When you vote by mail in the comfort of your home, how do you guarantee that no such tampering happened?

As an out of state college student, I'm very much so fond of voting by mail.

I voted about three weeks ago.

Generally, you're also allowed to register to vote where you go to college, too.

yes, but I don't particularly care about the politics in the state I'm in.

In fact some States (e.g. WA was like this) only allow voting by mail. Potentially disenfranchising perhaps; how do I vote if I'm homeless?

Pierce county in WA still has polling places. It's Oregon that is entirely vote-by-mail.

Turns out king county (seattle's county) has three in-person voting facilities for people who need accessible accommodations[1]. News to me.

[1] http://kingcounty.gov/elections/voting/accessible.aspx

You'd go to a post office. If a homeless person can't figure that out, then they are uninformed. The US system doesn't work with uninformed voters. So, that's a win IMHO.

"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson

It's easier to be informed of candidates' position than the logistics of voting. Free and discarded newspapers are everywhere, and cover the former extensively, but the latter only marginally if at all.

Case in point, at least two HN readers (OP and myself) didn't know homeless people could vote by mail at the US Post Office, but I know at least one of them is very well-informed on the issues.

It need not be.

By law in Canada, employers are required to make sure that every employee has three and half hours during which they can go vote.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=faq...

In Israel election day is a national holiday and everyone is off from work/school.

EDIT: Spelling