The first election held in America was on January 7. 1789. Only white male property owners voted and there were only 15 electoral votes at stake. There were quite a few candidates hoping to be the first President, John Adams, John Jay, Robert Hanson Harrison, John Rutledge, Samuel Huntington, John Milton, James Armstrong, Benjamin Lincoln, Edward Telfair and, of course, George Washington.
Moving through the 10th house, which controls government, was Pluto, the change agent and the Sun. Sun energy is always energizing and displays our inner spark so I am sure there was a tremendous felling of excitement that this new experiment was voting for a leader!
However, the Jupiter and Uranus retrogrades in the fourth house, that of home and roots and who we are at our core, shows that there was a good deal of both nervous energy and trepidation. Perhaps there was fear around our chances of success. We know that there was a great deal of dissention regarding the type of government we should have. The stark lines political “factions” so dreaded by President Washington were already there and the battle between Federalist and Anti-Federalist was just years away from explosion.
P.S. We didn’t start voting in November until 1845. Before that states called elections within a 34 day window before the first Wednesday in December. However, this caused problems because the earlier voting states often influenced the outcome of the elections of those with later polling dates. When the law passed in 1845 making one day the official Election Day, they needed one that did not interfere with farming since we were mostly an agrarian society. Spring, summer and early fall were busy times in the fields. Tuesday was a good day because it often took a full day for people to get to polling sites. They could not travel on Sunday because of church and most towns designated Wednesday as market day so Tuesday worked well.
