Voting and the U.S. Constitution

Nope. Congress decides. Article II, Section 1, second paragraph.

Thank you, jespah.

The answer is "The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

I guess Congress chose the first Tuesday after the first Monday and allows States to conduct the vote by mail as long as the voting period ends on the date determined by Congress.

I believe you're right.

American laziness and propensity to prefer slugfests do create problems for a democracy. The wide open contest with everyone encouraged to vote and encouraged to gift money to the cause brings around questions of the quality of the vote as well as makes it easy to get around campaign finance laws. With mail in ballets the question needs to be asked of what is the quality of a vote from someone who will not take the time to go to a polling place. we know that ease diminishes value, a modern e-mail complaint is far less worthy of consideration than was a hand written complaint letter sent my the mails, something that the writer was required to invest a substantial about of time into. Mail in ballets also dilutes the concept of the vote taking place on one day, increasingly the vote is now taken in over a two week period. A few absentee ballets that are counted provisionally is one thing, conducting a major portion of the polling in this way is something else. The dynamics of the election are changed. Lastly, mail in ballets are more easy to corrupt than polling place ballets, with polling places a person must show up and identify themselves before voting, with mail in ballets the vote could easily be a proxy.

Mail in ballots may be worth doing, but it is not a slam dunk. The common explanations that it is cheaper and easier for damn sure are not good justifications, as cheap means decreased quality if it has any relationship to quality at all.

The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote in USA constitution.