I recently said to my 14-year-old son, after he feigned ignorance of one of the house rules he routinely breaks — likely bringing candy to his bedroom or Snapgramming or Instachatting in the basement where nothing good could ever happen — “I was born on a Tuesday but it wasn’t last Tuesday.”
He laughed in that smug and omniscient way adolescents have laughed at the odd things their elders have said since the first Neanderthal adolescent stormed away from his or her lame Neanderthal parents.
Then he asked, “Were you really born on a Tuesday?”
I had no idea. I thought it was just a saying what people said when they needed to reinforce the idea that they weren’t as naïve as the person to whom they were speaking thought they were; an axiomatic cousin of “I wasn’t born yesterday.” My son and I located a perpetual calendar via Google and it turns out, I really was born on a Tuesday!! A Tuesday in October during the heralded Nixon administration.
Tuesday is generally considered to be an unlucky day. That is the day that the fall of Constantinople happened. Tuesday is named for Mars, the god of war. Black Tuesday was Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed. It used to be the day that albums were released until the internet happened and now, to the extent singers even make albums, singers release new songs on Friday.
No one in my sphere, to the best of my knowledge, has ever exclaimed “T.G.I.T. — Thank God It’s Tuesday!”
Since 1845, Tuesday has been election day in the United States. This is so because in the olden days, people would often have to travel a day in their wagons to get to their polling place. Since they could not be expected to travel on Sunday, a day of religious observance, they traveled on Monday instead, arrived at the polling places that evening, voted on Tuesday morning, and then drove their covered wagons back home where they resumed their wheat farming and their lumber jacking and their blacksmithing and their butter churning.
My wife and I now typically buy our butter at Wegman’s. And the steed we drive to the polling place is a Subaru. Lots of people, however, need to take time off from work and take a bus or two to polling places to vote. Recent well-publicized incidents of what former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams calls “gross mismanagement” of elections has placed renewed emphasis on issues affecting voter access.
Hearing Mitch McConnell denouncing Democratic legislation to increase voter turnout and calling it a “power grab by Democrats” made me simultaneously angry and amused. Amused at his frankness in his acknowledgment that yes, the more people who vote the more power those people get. And angry that an elected official could outright denounce one of the very tenets of democracy — to wit, a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives — and not be immediately run out of town. What is Mitch afraid of? Why not make it easier for all eligible people to vote?
Me quoting Stacey Abrams and driving a Subaru likely provides some insight into my political leanings. But I know hypocrisy is everywhere. Mitch’s “power grab” hypocrisy, though, is particularly revolting. A representative of the people explicitly vilifying efforts to secure the rights of those people to choose makes me shudder.
Without delving into ancillary issues like antiquated voting machines and Russian interference and bogus allegations of voter fraud and felon disenfranchisement, the idea that people have to endure what they endure to cast a vote on a Tuesday should make us angry. The solutions are surely multi-faceted and justifiably include day-of registration, making the first Tuesday in November a holiday (or making Election Day a Saturday), and expanding voting periods (which all but 11 states currently allow).
Making voting easier for the people most affected by its results is positively necessary. And we all know what Mitch is afraid of.
I was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn’t last Tuesday.
Gary Almeter (gmalmeter@gmail.com) is an attorney in Towson. His book “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” will be published in March.