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Only two parties dominate the American political system. Republicans and Democrats. So the president is always from one of these two parties.
The Republican Party is a conservative political party in the United States. President Donald Trump is the party’s candidate this year. The Democrats, on the other hand, are a liberal political party in America. Joe Biden is the party’s presidential candidate this year.
These two presidential candidates in this election are over 60 years old. If Trump wins, his second term will begin at age 84. If Biden wins, he will be the oldest president in American history at the age of eight.
How will the winner be determined?
In a presidential presidential democracy in the United States, the candidate with the most votes may not win the election, and the candidate with the fewest votes may be the next president.
This is due to a special 200-year-old electoral system in the United States called the Electoral College. The key to the White House is in the hands of those who do well in this electoral college. Here the president is not elected by direct vote but by indirect vote.
To win the US presidential election, a candidate generally has to win by two types of votes. One of them is the public vote, known as the “popular vote”; Another is the Electoral College vote. Between these two, the victory or defeat of the candidate is determined by the vote of the Electoral College.
Four years ago, Republican candidate Donald Trump won the election, while rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost by nearly 3 million votes.
What is this ‘electoral college’?
In the US presidential elections, voters elect a group of officials by casting their votes, they are called electors. These voters play the role of selectors. The electors of a state together are called polling stations.
There are a total of 51 polling stations in the country, including 50 states and the capital, Washington DC (District of Columbia).
This electoral college is the official authority in the election of the president and vice president of the United States.
The number of voters in each state is the same. This is determined by the number of state representatives and senators in Congress. The number of state representatives depends on the population, which is determined by the census every 10 years.
In contrast to the two-chamber seats in the United States House of Representatives (435 in the House of Representatives, 100 in the Senate), the states get their assigned constituencies. Although there is no congressional representative in the District of Columbia, three voters come from there.
On Election Day, voters cast their vote with the candidate of their choice in mind, but in reality they chose 538 voters from 51 polling stations and handed over responsibility for the presidential election.
To be elected president, a candidate must obtain at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes. The key to the White House comes in the form of 270 of the 538 electoral votes from 50 states and the District of Columbia.
How many electoral votes in a state
California has the highest number of electoral votes, 55. It is followed by Texas at 36, New York and Florida at 29, Illinois and Pennsylvania at 20.
16 in Ohio, 17 in Michigan and Georgia, 15 in North Carolina, 14 in New Jersey, 13 in Virginia, 12 in Washington, 11 in Arizona, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Indiana, 10 in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland and 9 in Mysore , Maryland and Missouri. 6 in Kentucky and Louisiana, 7 in Connecticut, Oregon, and Oklahoma, 6 in Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Nevada, and Utah; 5 in West Virginia, New Mexico and Nebraska; 4 in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Idaho, and Hawaii; There are 3 electoral votes in Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, Delaware, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Alaska.
The winner takes it all:
The rule in most states is: “Winner takes all.” This means that if there are ten electoral votes in a state, the party that obtains at least six, that is, the majority of electoral votes, will be considered as the party that obtains the ten electoral votes in that state.
This rule is followed in 48 states and the District of Columbia in the United States. But in the states of Nebraska and Maine, the “winner takes all” rule is not followed, here electoral votes are divided in proportion to the votes received by the candidates.
There is a precedent in the United States of losing the electoral vote even when the people are directly in the lead. Democratic candidate Hillary received about 3 million more votes than Republican Trump in the direct vote, but lost in the electoral vote.
Earlier, in 2000, Republican George W. Bush won the election by an overwhelming majority, but lost to Democratic candidate Al Gore in a direct election.
Why this method?
When the Constitution of the United States was written in 1817, it was practically impossible to elect a national president through national elections. This was due to the size of the country and the backwardness of the communications system.
At the time, there was not much enthusiasm in the capital, Washington DC, for legislators to approve the election of a president.
So the framers of the constitution created the Electoral College, giving each state the opportunity to play a role in the presidential election with one electorate.
They supported the polling station system because smaller states had more opportunities to speak this way than in presidential elections by checking the popularity of the vote across the country.
Since the number of electoral votes was determined by the size of the states’ population, the southern states also supported this method as they had the opportunity to have more influence in presidential elections than direct voting.
Because a large part of the population here were slaves. Although slaves did not have the right to vote, they were counted in the census for three-fifths of a complete human being.
Do voters have to vote for the winning candidate?
Some state voters can vote for any candidate of their choice, regardless of who the voters voted for. But in reality, voters almost always vote for the candidate who gets the most votes in their state.
The electorate is said to be “untrustworthy” if they vote against the state-chosen candidate for president. In 2016, there were seven of those polling station votes, but unreliable voters couldn’t change the results.
What happens if a candidate does not get a majority?
In that case, the lower house of Congress, the House of Representatives, would elect the president by vote, and the Senate would elect a vice president, in accordance with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
But so far this has only happened once. After the distribution of electoral votes among the four candidates in 1824, none of them obtained a majority.
But with the dominance of the two political parties in the current American system, this is no longer supposed to be the case.
Unequal distribution of electoral votes:
Although the number of electoral votes in a state reflects the population of that state, the standard of relative representation of electoral votes varies in the United States due to the rule of having at least 3 votes per state.
Because of this rule, the smaller states of North and South Dakota and New England received more electoral votes than their smaller populations. The most populous states, such as California, Texas, and Florida, on the other hand, have relatively fewer electoral votes.
Wyoming has an electoral vote of one hundred and ninety-three thousand people, compared to seven hundred and eighteen thousand people for every electoral vote in California. This means that an electoral vote in California represents more than three times the number of people who vote in Wyoming. This inequality exists throughout the country.
When will the voting results be available?
It may take a few days to count each vote. But usually the day after the vote, it’s clear who wins the next morning.
After winning the 2016 election, Donald Trump got up at three in the morning to give a victory speech in front of supporters on the New York stage.
However, this time the election may not be like the last vote. This is because, in most cases, due to the coronavirus epidemic, there is a postal or postal voting system, so it can take days or even weeks to get the results.
Is only the president elected?
No, the focus of the election is on who wins, whether it’s Trump or Biden, but in this election, voters will choose the president and new members of Congress.
The US House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats. So they will try to keep him in this election and control the Senate.
If Democrats win a majority in both houses, President Trump may thwart or delay the president’s plan if he is reelected.
Voting is taking place in all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and in all 33 seats in the Senate this year.
When will the winning candidate take over?
If Joe Biden wins the election, he will not immediately replace Trump. Because the new leader has to take time to appoint cabinet ministers and make other plans.
Only then can the new president be officially sworn in. The oath is usually taken on January 20 at the Capitol in Washington DC.
Shortly after the swearing-in ceremony, the new president went to the White House for a four-year term.
(Source: BBC, Guardian, Encyclopedia Britannica)
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