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This was actually the original intention of the Tuesday voting day - if farmers were at church on Sunday, and at market on Wednesday, they could only reliably g

by azernik 10y ago

This was actually the original intention of the Tuesday voting day - if farmers were at church on Sunday, and at market on Wednesday, they could only reliably get to their polling place on Tuesday. This reasoning, clearly, does not translate well to a modern urban economy. The US is in many ways strangely traditional. EDIT: Replaced folk origin with actual researched origin.

Amezarak 10y ago
There are tens of millions of people [1] who work on Sundays - something that has occurred as we moved into a 'modern urban economy'. I'm not convinced that moving it to a weekend would make any noticeable difference in the numbers. The weekend is no longer 'special' except mostly for white collar professionals. [1] I couldn't find any actual numbers so I was just looking up retail and restaurant industry jobs on the BLS website, but WiseGeek claims (without a reference) that the BLS says 35% of Americans work weekends.