2 U.S.C. § 7
Section 7 · Time of election
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 22 court decisions — leading case Foster v. Love (1997)
Most recently applied in Watson v. Republican National Committee (U.S. 2026, slip opinion) (June 2026)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
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.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
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 Mar. 3, 1875 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 June 5, 1934, 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.”
Cross References
Time for election of Representatives, see Const. Art. I, §4, cl. 1.