Election Day

Last Tuesday was Election Day here in the US.  They have it every year, on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  It's a Tuesday because that used to be market day, or some such, which was a good day for people to vote on.  Now it's Tuesday because it always has been and if it was good enough for grandpappy it's good enough for me.

That certainly seems to be the gist of it, and Mrs Walles was complaining how silly it is that Election Day is not a holiday so that people could get to the polls if they so wished. 

The reason they need to have an Election Day each year is that they do like a vote here (whether they actually use the vote is a different matter, but they clearly like the option to be there).  In Pennsylvania they vote judges in and out of office, and district attorneys and all manner of relatively minor public officials at the local and state level.  Some states like to hold referenda on legislative issues, what they call voting on propositions.  Mississippi had a contentious one on whether an embryo is a person (they decided that it isn't).

All this reminded me that there is an election back in New Zealand that I have a say in, so I got my papers filled in ready to send away.  I suppose I could have posted my papers away on Tuesday, to get into the swing of things here, but in many matters I'm a traditionalist, so I sent them away on Saturday instead.