US Presidential Election 2020: How do people in the US elect their president?
With less than 100 days to go before the election of a new president in the United States, did you know that the candidate who gets the most votes from the people in this presidential election on November 3, 2020 is not necessarily the new president of the country? Became
This is because in the United States, the president is not elected directly by ordinary voters, but by the Electoral College.
What is the Electoral College for which Americans vote?
The most important and complex institution in the US presidential election is the Electoral College. The Electoral College is basically an institution that elects the president and the members of this college, also called electors, win by popular vote.
That is, when the American people go to the polls to vote in the presidential election, they are actually voting for the people who together form the Electoral College, and their job is to elect the country's president and vice president.
Voting on Tuesday in the first week of November is actually for the electors who ultimately elect the president. At the time of voting in each state, the ballot paper through which the voters actually cast their vote is marked 'Electors for (candidate's name)'.
After being elected, these electors gather in one place in their respective states in December to vote for the president.
In the past, these electors could vote of their own free will, but now legally these electors can only vote for the candidate in whose name they have voted.
How does the Electoral College work?
The number of members of the Electoral College in each state of the United States is determined by the proportion of its population, while the total number of electors is 538.
Each state has as many seats in the Congress and as many senators in the Senate as there are electors in its Electoral College. That is, if a state has ten seats in the Congress and two seats in the Senate, then the total number of electors going to the Electoral College from that state will be twelve.
The state of California in the United States has the highest number of electors at 55, while the least populous states, such as Wyoming, Alaska or North Dakota, have three, which is the minimum number set for any state.
Any candidate for the presidency of the United States needs the support of 270 or more electors out of 538.
States usually give all their electoral college votes to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state.
For example, in the state of Texas, if the Republican candidate gets 50.1% of the vote, then all 38 electoral votes in the state will go to that candidate.
Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that distribute their electoral college votes in proportion to the number of votes a candidate receives.
That is why presidential candidates focus more on those states which are called 'swing states' or 'dovadol states'. These are the states where the scales in the results can be heavy for any candidate.
The more states the presidential candidate wins, the closer his or her electoral votes bring him closer to the White House.
Can you lose the presidency even with a majority of the popular vote?
Yes, that's right.
It is possible that a candidate has been the most popular among the voters at the national level but he could not get the required 270 electoral votes to become president.
In fact, two of the last five presidential elections in the United States have been won by candidates who received fewer votes than the losing candidate.
In 2016, Donald Trump received 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but he became president because he won a majority in the Electoral College.
In 2000, George W. Bush won by 271 electoral votes, while his Democratic rival, El Gore, who lost the presidential election, received half a million more votes.
In addition, there are only three American presidents who became president without a popular vote, all in the 19th century when John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison became president.
Why was this system chosen?
When the US Constitution was being drafted in 1787, it was impossible to elect a president by popular vote at a national level. The reason was the large area of the country and difficulties in communication.
At the same time, there was little consensus that lawmakers in Washington, D.C., should be given the right to elect a president.
In this situation, the framers of the constitution formed an electoral college in which each state elects electors.
Smaller states liked the system because it made their role in the election of the president more effective than in ordinary voting.
The idea of an Electoral College was also popular in the southern states of the country where a large part of the population at that time consisted of slaves. (Although slaves did not have the right to vote, at that time they were counted in the census and the slave was 3/5 times more than an independent person).
Because the number of electoral votes required for the election of a US president in a state depends on its population, the southern states had a greater chance of influencing the presidential election under this system.
Is it necessary for electors to vote for the winning candidate in the general election?
In some states, electors can vote for the candidate of their choice, whether the people have won or not, but electors usually vote for the candidate who has received the most votes in their state.
If electors do not vote for the elected candidate of the people of their state, they are called 'faithless'. Seven electoral college voters did so in the 2016 presidential election, but their move had no effect on the outcome.
What happens if a candidate does not get a majority?
In this case, the House of Representatives votes for the President.
This is the only time that in 1824 the electoral votes were divided between four candidates and no one got a majority.
Now that only two parties have the upper hand in American politics, this does not seem likely to happen again.
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