What is the purpose of Election Day in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter?

The purpose of the
Election Day celebration is to inaugurate a new man as governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. explains tothat all the people have gathered in order to see the procession consisting
of the governor and magistrates and ministers, with soldiers marching before them and music
playing.  She says that "a new man is beginning to rule over them" and, as is
typically the custom since the first nation was founded, everyone has come together to make
merry as though in anticipation of a "golden year" about to begin under this new man's
leadership.  It is, frankly, a rather optimistic time by Puritan standards. 

However, in terms of the novel, Election Day is a good reason to have everyone out and
about in the town, just as they were when Hester was first shamed upon the scaffold some seven
years prior.  Children are out of school, people have left their homes and businesses, and even
some of the Indians have come to town to see the goings-on.  This equivalent scene bookends the
story: it began with Hester's public humiliation and ends with 's.  Just as she was called on to
speak her guilt before the entire community, so will he speak his guilt before the entire
community.  The Election Day crowd neatly parallels the crowd who gathered at the spectacle of
Hester's humiliation, and it allows Hawthorne to give Dimmesdale a scene as public and
significant as hers had been.