Our founders did not establish this 'first Tuesday after first Monday' voting practice; a uniform date for chosing presidential Electors was first instituted by the U.S. Congress in 1845 although there are still exceptions amongst the states. Any search engine (I prefer Google) will reveal 'many' sources that explain and discuss the whys and wherefores. Simply enter the quoted phrase as the search term. More details may be learned from a Google *book* search using the same search term. Hope this helps. Neil McDonald ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harris Kern" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 12:53 PM Subject: [VA-HIST] Voting day Do any of the founder's papers speak of why "the first Tuesday after the first Monday". Seems rather complicated, but there must have been a reason to make it so. I'm sure we can think up all kinds of reason that could have been in play at the time, but did any of the participants write down what actual reasoning went into the formalization of "the first Tuesday after the first Monday"? Harris Kern