Cite as: 609 U. S. ____ (2026) 3 Opinion of the Court intervened again, mandating that the election of Representatives also take place on a single day—the same Tuesday specified in the Presidential election-day statute. Act of Feb. 2, 1872, ch. 11, §3, 17 Stat. 28. After the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, Congress required Senators to be elected on the same day as Representatives. Act of June 4, 1914, ch. 103, §1, 38 Stat. 384. Today, each of the three election-day statutes sets the day for the “election” on a Tuesday in November. B In our Nation’s early years, voters had to cast their ballots in person in the district where they lived. See, e.g., J. Benton, Voting in the Field: A Forgotten Chapter of the Civil War 4–5 (1915) (Benton). Elections were “lively public events,” marked not only by “ ‘continuous electioneering and political arguments’ ” but also by “ ‘picnics, drinking, and boisterous celebration.’ ” T. El-Haj, Changing the People: Legal Regulation and American Democracy, 86 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1, 14 (2011) (quoting Silbey 143). Public assembly was not just a matter of merriment—it also helped ensure that only those qualified to vote did so. See, e.g., E. Evans, A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States 48 (1917). Ballots were cast “in the company of neighbors and under the watchful eyes of community leaders.” D. Collins, Absentee Soldier Voting in Civil War Law and Politics 1–13 (2014) (Ph.D. Dissertation, Wayne State University) (Collins). For instance, under the Pennsylvania constitution, a voter had to vote in “an appropriate election district, in order that his neighbours might be at hand to establish his right to vote if it were challenged, or to challenge if it were doubtful.” Chase v. Miller, 41 Pa. 403, 419 (1862). Things started to change during the Civil War, when some States allowed soldiers to vote from afar by absentee ballot. See Benton 4–14. Access to absentee voting