Why was november chosen as election month?

(CNN) Presidential son-in-law and White House fix-it-man Jared Kushner raised some eyebrows yet again when he told Time Magazine it was "too far in the future" to tell if Election Day would have to be moved because of the pandemic -- comments that suggested it might be a possibility later on.

White House officials responded by saying, correctly, that it's up to Congress to set the date of the presidential election.

Election Day was set by Congress back in 1845 -- it's always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

US elections used to drag on, taking more than a month, until Congress mandated the uniform date. That wasn't a problem because voters technically don't pick the President that day. They pick electors who go on to pick the President via a vote in the Electoral College.

Electors meet in state capitols and vote in December. The 20th Amendment requires a new Congress take office on January 3 every other year and that a new presidential term starts on January 20 every four years. Those dates would be harder to move.

What's the Electoral College?

Americans who go to the polls on Election Day are voting for 538 electors who, according to the system laid out by the Constitution, meet in their respective states and vote for president and vice president. Back in the 1800s, it wasn't always even voters who picked the electors. Often it was state legislators.

These people, the electors, comprise the Electoral College, and their votes are then counted in a joint session of Congress.

It takes 270 electoral votes to get a majority of the Electoral College. The total number of electors -- 538 -- cannot change unless there are more lawmakers added on Capitol Hill or a constitutional amendment. But the number of electors allocated to each state can change every 10 years, after the constitutionally mandated Census.

How does a President get elected?

Each state gets at least 3 electors. California, the most populous state, has 53 congressmen and two senators, so they get 55 electoral votes.

Texas, the largest reliably Republican-leaning state, has 36 congressmen and two senators, so they get 38 electoral votes.

Six states -- Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming -- are so small, population-wise, that they only have one congressperson apiece, and the lowest possible three electoral votes. The District of Columbia also gets three electoral votes. Voters in Puerto Rico and other non-state territories get no electoral votes, although they can take part in presidential primaries.

The states are in charge of selecting their own electors. And a number of states do not require their electors to honor the election results, which has led, occasionally, to the phenomenon known as a "faithless elector." (By some coincidence, the Supreme Court is right now hearing cases about whether states can penalize "faithless" electors who vote for someone other than the person chosen by the voters. Ten electors did just that in 2016.)

What will change because of the pandemic?

So things have changed a lot over time, but not Election Day. It's been set as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November for more than 150 years. Both President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have said clearly that this year's election must happen November 3, regardless of a Covid-19 resurgence in the fall.

But there's been a lot of discussion recently about how people should vote.

And while federal law sets when presidential Election Day occurs, it leaves the particulars over to the states. That's led to some bad history of voter suppression and allegations of that continue to this day.

There's a patchwork of primaries that give us ballot options. Multiple states delayed their primaries. Ultimately, every state's ballot on Election Day will be slightly different.

There is precedent for voting during a pandemic. In 1918, midterm elections were held, although turnout was down quite a bit -- there was also a war going on. Republicans that year seized control of both the House and Senate from President Woodrow Wilson's Democrats.

Trump is a big backer of voter ID laws. And he thinks that people "cheat" when they can vote by mail.

There's no evidence of widespread cheating in the five US states that entirely vote by mail. Most states allow absentee voting.

When Trump alleged there is cheating during mail-in voting, he was specifically talking about efforts to postpone the primary in Wisconsin. The primary went ahead and more than 50 people who later tested positive for Covid-19 said they had voted in-person.

Every day is a good day to exercise our freedom, but why do we always vote on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November?

Under a law enacted in 1845, the day designated as Election Day for choosing elected federal government officials is set as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November of the year in which they are to be appointed.” This means that the earliest possible date for federal elections is November 2, and the latest possible date is November 8.

For the federal offices of president, vice president, and members of Congress, Election Day occurs only in even-numbered years. Presidential elections are held every four years, in years divisible by four, in which electors for president and vice president are chosen according to the method determined by each state as required by the Electoral College system. Midterm elections for members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate are held every two years. Terms of office for persons elected in federal elections begin in January of the year following the election. The president and vice president are sworn in on Inauguration Day, typically held on January 20.

Before Congress passed the 1845 law, the states held federal elections at their discretion within 34 days before the first Wednesday in December. But this system had the potential to result in electoral chaos; already knowing the election results from states that voted in early November, people in states that did not vote until late November or early December often decided not to bother to vote. The lower voter turnout in late-voting states could change the outcome of the overall election. On the other hand, in very close elections, states that voted last had the power to decide the election. Hoping to eliminate the voting lag problem and streamline the entire election process, Congress created the current federal Election Day.

Just like the food on their tables, Americans can thank agriculture for an Election Day in early November. In the 1800s, most citizens—and voters—made their living as farmers and lived far from the polling places in cities. Since voting required a day-long horseback ride for many people, Congress decided a two-day window for elections. While weekends seemed a natural choice, most people spent Sundays in church, and many farmers transported their crops to market on Wednesday through Friday. With those restrictions in mind, Congress chose Tuesday as the most convenient day of the week for elections.

Farming is also the reason for Election Day falling in November. Spring and summer months were for planting and cultivating crops, while late summer through early fall were reserved for the harvest. As the month after the harvest, but before the snows of winter made travel difficult, November seemed the best choice.

Congress wanted to make sure the election never fell on November 1 because that's a holy day of obligation in the Roman Catholic Church (All Saints' Day). In addition, many businesses tallied their sales and expenses and did their books for the previous month on the first of each month. Congress feared that an unusually good or bad economic month might influence the vote if it were held on the first.

But, that was then and this is now. True, most of us are no longer farmers, and traveling to the polls is far simpler than it was in 1845. But is there, even now, a single "better" day to hold a national election than the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November?

School is back in session and most summer vacations are over. The closest national holiday—Thanksgiving—is still several weeks away, and you don't have to buy anybody a gift. But the runaway best all-time reason for holding the election in early November is one that Congress never even considered in 1845. It's far enough from April 15 that we have forgotten about the previous tax day and haven't started worrying about the next one.

It has often been suggested that voter turnout would be higher if Election Day was a federal holiday like Labor Day or the Fourth of July. In some states, including Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia, Election Day is already a state holiday. In some other states, laws require employers to allow workers to take paid time off to vote. The California Elections Code, for example, requires that all employees who are otherwise unable to vote be given two hours off with pay at the start or end of their workday.

At the federal level, Democratic members of Congress have been lobbying to have Election Day designated as a national holiday since 2005. On January 4, 2005, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan introduced the Democracy Day Act of 2005, calling for the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year—Election Day—to be a legally recognized national holiday. Conyers argued that an Election Day holiday would boost voter turnout and raise people's awareness of the importance of voting and civic participation. Though it eventually gained 110 cosponsors, the bill was never considered by the full House.

However, on September 25, 2018, the bill was reintroduced as the Democracy Day Act of 2018 (S. 3498) by Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote,” Sanders said. “While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.” The bill currently remains in the Senate Judiciary Committee and has little chance of passage.

On a typical Election Day, polling places are packed with people. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts across the nation urged state election officials to implement mail-in voting due to the challenges of social distancing and sanitation while voting in person.

Several states already planned to use mail-in voting in their 2020 primary elections. Oregon started using mail-in ballots as a voting method in 1981, and in 2000, Oregon became the first state to hold a presidential election by mail-in voting. The election saw an astounding 79% voter turnout, according to the Oregon secretary of state’s office.

On June 18, 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring the state’s election officials to mail a ballot to every registered, active voter for the November 3, 2020, general election.

However, the nationwide use of mail-in voting for presidential elections was met with opposition from some politicians, who contend that it would encourage voter fraud.

Prominent figures who’ve alleged this include Attorney General William Barr, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and President Donald Trump. Some of the concerns have been the chance of ballot theft, printing errors, and duplicate voting. Trump asserted that “these mistakes are made by the millions.”

Yet, several election experts, citing experience, have been skeptical of such claims. Like Oregon, California, and Florida, several states have used mail-in ballots in state and local elections for years with little verified evidence of voter fraud. In addition, military service members have been voting by mail since the Civil War with no evidence of widespread fraud.