By Patrick R. Potyondy

Given that voting is the foundation of the American republic, it is fitting that we will soon celebrate National Voter Registration Day (NVRD) on Sept. 26.

Regardless of whether your primary elections concerns include all-mail voting, voter ID or other registration laws, everyone can agree that getting more people properly registered to vote is a worthy goal.

Via the National Voter Registration Day website, you can learn more about how to get involved.

Once there, you can sign up to become a “partner of National Voter Registration Day” where you can pledge to:

• Organize an in-person voter registration effort on Sept. 26th, 2017.
• Promote National Voter Registration Day through marketing and communication efforts.
• Financially support and/or make in-kind donations to National Voter Registration Day.

You can also learn more about voter registration generally on our very helpful NCSL website.

To mark this year’s NVRD, check out some interesting historical facts about American elections:

• Alcohol flowed freely and good eats were on offer in the earliest elections. To turn out and thank voters, candidates often plied them with meat and drink. Not only did the Greeks and Romans do it long before the Americans, but George Washington did it, too. James Madison once didn’t. He lost that 1777 election.
• Have you ever wondered why most elections are held in November? The earliest Congresses usually met from December through March, because that was the only time of year—dead winter—when those who were farmers could get away. November gave the largely agrarian United States voters the best time to vote. It also gave officials enough time to hold an election and count the votes before Congress met.
• Fourteen women have run for president beginning in 1872. Five of the 14 were nominated as third-party candidates; two were eventually chosen as major-party candidates for vice president; one was selected as a major party’s candidate for the presidency.
• As political parties shift, fade and rise up, historians and political scientists generally agree that there have been six major “party systems” in the United States. Do you know them all?
• Georgia became the first state to lower the eligible voting age from 21 to 18. But 18 didn’t become the voting age nationally until Congress and the states ratified the 26^th Amendment in 1971.

Patrick Potyondy is a legislative policy specialist and Mellon-ACLS public fellow in NCSL’s Elections and Redistricting Program.

Email Patrick.