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Title 2 — The Congress

Chapter 1 — Election of Senators and Representatives

§ 7. Time of election

Statutory text

The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter.

Legislative history

Reconstructed from this section’s Code source credit and amendment notes, resolved against the local Statutes at Large. Editorial notes are evidence, not the law that made the change.

  1. R.S. § 25

    Enacted · 2 U.S.C. § 7

    R.S. § 25

    Unresolved: No Public Law or Statutes at Large citation in the Code source.

    Source evidence

    Code source credit
    R.S. § 25

0 of 1 references resolved to an enrolled provision · 1 unresolved

Editorial Notes

Codification

R.S. § 25 derived from act Feb. 2, 1872, ch. 11, § 3, 17 Stat. 28.

The second sentence of this section, which was based on section 6 of the act and made this section inapplicable to any State that had not yet changed its day of election and whose constitution required an amendment to change the day of election of its State officers, was omitted.

Amendments

1934—Act , substituted “3d day of January” for “fourth day of March”.

Constitutional Provisions

The first section of Amendment XX to the Constitution provides: “The terms of Senators and Representatives [shall end] at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.”

Time for election of Representatives, see Const. Art. I, § 4, cl. 1.

Credits

1875–1934 · 3 acts
  1. R.S. § 25
  2. 1875Mar. 3, 1875, ch. 130, § 6, 18 Stat. 400
  3. 1934June 5, 1934, ch. 390, § 2, 48 Stat. 879.
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(R.S. § 25; Mar. 3, 1875, ch. 130, § 6, 18 Stat. 400; June 5, 1934, ch. 390, § 2, 48 Stat. 879.)

Parsed from the official OLRC USLM XML in data/usc_all/usc02.xml · release point 119-108 · OLRC build 2026-04-17

USLM identifier /us/usc/t2/s7