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While debates are not just about a candidate’s looks, most debate rules contain language that prevents candidates from artificially enhancing their physical qualities. For example, prior rules have prohibited shoes that increase a candidate’s height, banned prosthetic devices that change a candidate’s physical appearance, and limited camera angles to prevent unflattering side and back shots. Candidates and their campaign managers are aware that visuals matter.
Debates are generally over by the end of October, just in time for Election Day. Beginning with the election of 1792, presidential elections were to be held in the thirty-four days prior to the “first Wednesday in December.”
2nd Congress, Session I, “An Act relative to the Election of a President and Vice President of the United States, and Declaring the Office Who Shall Act as President in Case of Vacancies in the Offices both of President and Vice President,” Chapter 8, section 1, image 239. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html (November 1, 2015). In 1845, Congress passed legislation that moved the presidential Election Day to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and in 1872, elections for the House of Representatives were also moved to that same Tuesday.
28th Congress, Session II. 23 January 1845. “An Act to Establish a Uniform Time for Holding Elections for Electors of President and Vice President in all the States of the Union,” Statute II, chapter 1, image 721. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html; 42nd Congress, Session II, “An Act for the Apportionment of Representatives to Congress among the Several Sates According to the Ninth Census.” Chapter 11, section 3, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html (November 1, 2015). The United States was then an agricultural country, and because a number of states restricted voting to property-owning males over twenty-one, farmers made up nearly 74 percent of voters.
Donald Ratcliffe. 2013. “The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy, 1787–1828,”
Journal of the Early Republic 33: 219–254; Stanley Lebergott. 1966. “Labor Force and Employment, 1800–1960,” In
Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800 , ed. Dorothy S. Brady. Ann Arbor, Michigan:
National Bureau of Economic Research , http://www.nber.org/books/brad66-1. The tradition of Election Day to fall in November allowed time for the lucrative fall harvest to be brought in and the farming season to end. And, while not all members of government were of the same religion, many wanted to ensure that voters were not kept from the polls by a weekend religious observance. Finally, business and mercantile concerns often closed their books on the first of the month. Rather than let accounting get in the way of voting, the bill’s language forces Election Day to fall between the second and eighth of the month.
Once the voters have cast ballots in November and all the election season madness comes to a close, races for governors and local representatives may be over, but the constitutional process of electing a president has only begun. The electors of the Electoral College travel to their respective state capitols and cast their votes in mid-December, often by signing a certificate recording their vote. In most cases, electors cast their ballots for the candidate who won the majority of votes in their state. The states then forward the certificates to the U.S. Senate.
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