If the Olympics and presidential elections only happen once every 4 years, why the hell are we not doing them on February 29th????

And February 29 doesn't happen on years ending in 00 unless the year ends in 000.

That's not correct. Centuries are not leap years, unless they're divisible by 400 (not 1000). So, 2400 will be a leap year, but 3000 will not.

February isn’t in summer.

Yeah, it is.

To add to this, weather conditions on November 5 are likely to be more temperate than February 29. November 5 can definitely still have bad weather, but you would be making in-person voting overall objectively statistically more difficult by pushing it into the end of February thanks to snow, where November doesn't even crack the top 5 months for the most snowfall (and we're talking early November here).

You would also be giving some president/Congress three-ish extra months nine-ish fewer months of a term for literally no reason by shifting it all the way to February 29, unless you wanted to roll out some decades-long scheme to incrementally push it there.

Edit: that also leaves the fact that you would have (presumably the first day of) one of the most watched events on Earth taking place on the same day as the general election, meaning arguably one of the few times when minute-by-minute 24-hour news coverage is necessary for the election, you'd get it interspersed with a ton of Olympics stuff, and you'd likely also have a decent chunk of people staying home to watch the Olympics instead of voting, further depressing turnout in addition to possible weather issues.

In 2000, there was a February 29, because it was a multiple of 4, and despite being a multiple of 100 it was also a multiple of 400. It was the exception of the exception of the exception. My parents signed their divorce on that day. Which makes it extra memorable for me. What a day 😀 !!

we would skip an election every 100 years or so

School is usually cancelled because the schools are often polling locations.

It makes it all the more dumb to not have it as a national holiday.

You have answered your own question.

Pretty sure my polling place is open for more than 12 hours. Maybe it varies by state, but that should be a reasonable amount of time for over 99% of the population to get there. Obviously, some places are massively overrun and understaffed, especially in the "unfavorable" districts, but I've had no issues making it out in less than 10 minutes by leaving for work 20 minutes early.

The USA was designed for minority rule since forever.

Is literally every business closed all weekend where you live? Or is this just another case of people not realizing that lots of people work holidays and weekends?

Businesses are already legally required to let people leave to vote.

At the time most Americans were farmers. Can't be Sunday because it's a Christian rest day, Wednesday neither because that's market day. They might have to travel a whole day to get there, so it can't be on Monday or Thursday either. Which leaves only Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.

Not quite—it’s every four years, excluding years divisible by 100, but not excluding years divisible by 400. So 2000 was a leap year, but it was the first century in 400 years for which that was the case (using the Gregorian calendar).

2000 was a leap year. Source: I was there.

The math on the 400 thing is the other way around.

you'd have gone 8 years without a vote between 1996 and 2004

On second thought, OP is absolutely correct and we need to invent a time machine to fix this mistake.

would allow too many minorities to vote, upset white people.