Why you are voting on Tuesday, OBAMA votes today in Chicago, OBAMA addresses the crowd in NC about his Grandmother

Why do we vote on a Tuesday... in November?

The short answer: We used to be a nation of farmers.

The long answer: Congress chose November because the harvest was over and the weather wouldn't be bad enough to prevent people from traveling.

As for Tuesday, people used to have to travel overnight to their polling location. (In 1845, horse was the preferred method of transport.) In an effort to avoid religious days of rest, Congress chose Tuesday, leaving Monday and Wednesday as travel days. Tuesday was voting (and horse-resting) day (source).

OBAMA PUSHED FOR EARLY VOTING

Obama wanted you to vote early but he waited until election day?!?!

Obama arrived at his precinct in Chicago shortly after 7:30 CST Tuesday. His wife, Michelle, and their young daughters accompanied him as he received a ballot and went to a polling station. The Obama's stood side by side and their daughters (do the girls have school?) looked on as they read their ballots.

Obama planned a quick campaign stop in Indiana on Election Day before a massive outdoor rally in front of the skyline in his adopted hometown of Chicago.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, sheds tears in this AP photo as he talks about his grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, Nov. 3, 2008. Obama's grandmother, who helped raise him, died peaceably in her sleep Obama announced Monday, one day before the presidential election. She was 86. This is bittersweet for Obama and I know that she would have wanted to know that her grandson was the first "black president" of the United States, she will be watching from above.