When American voters set off next November 5 to choose their preferred candidate for president, they will hope that their neighbors and residents of their state will do the same, if only because their combined votes will ultimately go to one candidate.
This is due to the nature of the system based on what are known as “electoral colleges” or “electoral colleges,” whose votes decide the identity of the president. It is true that voters vote for their preferred candidate, but the candidate who receives the most popular votes wins the state’s combined electoral college votes.
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How do these complexes work?
Imagine, for example, the state of California, which has 54 electoral college votes (proportionate to its size in terms of population). If one candidate wins the majority of its electoral votes (50.1%, for example – if there are only two candidates), then he wins all of its electoral college votes. .
In total, there are 538 electoral college votes in the United States, and the president who receives 270 or more votes wins the presidential election, regardless of the total direct popular vote for him.
In its long history, the president who received the majority of voters’ votes only lost 5 times, in years’ elections. 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016.
However, some exceptions may occur. In the 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton won the majority of the electoral votes in the state of Maine, but she received only 3 out of 4 electoral college votes, and one vote went to Trump, after the state ended the electoral college system. “Winner takes all.”
There is also what is known as the phenomenon of “disobedient Electoral College Member” or “Disloyal Voter”, when individual electors cast their ballots, they are in fact giving permission to representatives of a party (members of the Electoral College) to vote on their behalf to choose the President and Vice President.
But sometimes members of the Electoral College break the mission they pledged to do and vote for another candidate, an issue not covered by the Constitution or federal law, although most states have rules to punish such people..
In the 2016 election, five Democratic electoral college members and two Republicans did not cast ballots for their party’s candidates and instead voted for other candidates.
The secret of this system… and other facts
When the United States Constitution was written in 1787, a national popular vote to elect a president was practically impossible due to the country’s large size (even before the rest of the states joined) and lack of reliable means of communication, so the Framers devised the Electoral College system.
– While the population of the North and South was roughly equal, about a third of Southerners were “slaves” (who did not have the right to vote), meaning the region would have less influence under a popular vote system, so the solution was an indirect system of election .
One advantage of this system is that it makes smaller states important to candidates. However, candidates do not need to travel around the country and can focus on key states. It also makes recounting votes easier.
However, one of its most notable defects is that the winner of the majority of citizens’ votes may lose the elections in the end, and thus some voters feel that their votes are not important, while what are known as “swing states” gain greater influence and receive the attention of the candidates.
The elections to choose the first President of the United States were held in 1789, two years after the Constitution defined the idea of the Electoral College, and the law stipulates that they be held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November of the election year (every 4 years). The second US election was held in 1792. ).
– If there is no candidate with the minimum threshold required to win, the House of Representatives meets in January to choose the winner of the presidential race in an emergency vote, which has only happened once in 1824, while the Senate chooses the vice president, and this is also an extremely rare event that has not been repeated. Since 1837.
The Constitution stipulates that the president must be a citizen born in the United States, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the country for at least 14 years. It prohibits the candidacy of anyone who has won two terms as president, and citizens over 18 years old can vote in elections.
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