# Why Saturday Caucuses and Primaries? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 4, 2012, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721 "2012-02-04T02:57:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/1 "2012-02-04T02:57:20Z")
Why do some states such as Nevada and South Carolina hold their election contests on a Saturday? ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/2 "2012-02-04T03:02:57Z")
I imagine that it encourages greater participation, at least in the case of caucuses. They’re not just “pop in and vote” activities. ---
**Author:** ![dorsk188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f05b48/32.png) [@dorsk188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorsk188)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/3 "2012-02-05T15:12:13Z")
It’s a conspiracy to keep orthodox Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists from voting. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2012, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/4 "2012-02-05T15:38:32Z")
> [@dorsk188](#): > > It’s a conspiracy to keep orthodox Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists from voting. :rolleyes: Nevada has some caucus spots that opened after sunset so Jews and SDA could participate. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2012, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/5 "2012-02-06T21:17:18Z")
“The version I heard was,” having primaries on weekdays tends to disenfranchise the people with lower incomes as they tend to be the ones that cannot get off work to vote during voting hours. Tuesday is “traditional” because, “in the old days” when you had to travel quite a bit to cast a ballot, you usually had to allocate a full day to travel to the voting site, one to vote, and one to travel back, and as travel on Sunday was pretty much out of the question for various reasons, it usually became Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, with Tuesday being the actual election day. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2012, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-saturday-caucuses-and-primaries/611721/6 "2012-02-07T10:37:09Z")
Tuesday was the traditional court day when many farmers would have come to town anyways. So it made sense in our agricultural past. Nowadays weekends are better in that more people have time to vote. In the glorious post industrial future when the vast majority of Americans have menial service jobs Saturday won’t be so great since so many of us will be slaving away all day making nice for the well paid white collar employees. Then Tuesday will again be preferable. Life is a circle.