Maine's Election Date

Periodically the cry, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation,” attracts public attention to the fact that Maine, alone among the states, elects representatives to Congress in September instead of November. How this came to be is fairly well known. But why does Maine persist in her aloofness?Section 3 of the act of February 2, 1872, for the apportionment of representatives to Congress among the several states, provided: “That the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-six, is hereby fixed and established as the day, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, for the election of Representatives and Delegates to the Forty-fifth Congress; and the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every second year thereafter, is hereby fixed and established as the day for the election, in each of said States and Territories, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the fourth day of March next thereafter.”