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The President of the United States (USA) has a great influence on people’s lives, both at home and abroad, so the outcome of the American elections to be held today will be important not only for Americans but also for the world community.
The American political system is dominated by only two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, so American presidents always belong to either of them.
Aside from today’s presidential election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are available for election, with all 33 seats in the Senate as well.
The Republicans
The Republicans are the conservative political party in the United States and their candidate in this year’s election is President Donald Trump, who hopes to secure another term in power.
The Republican Party is also known as the Republican Party or the Great Old Party. In recent years, he has championed lower taxes, gun rights, and stricter restrictions on immigration, and support for the party tends to be strongest in more rural areas of the United States where former Republican presidents, including George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. , He came from.
The democrats
The Democrats are the liberal political party and their candidate is Joe Biden, a seasoned politician best known for serving as Barrack Obama’s vice president for eight years.
Both are in their 70s: Trump will be 74 at the start of his second term if he wins, while at 78, Biden will be the oldest first-term president in U.S. history.
Electoral College Votes
Each state gets a certain number of electoral college votes in part based on its population and there are 538 votes at stake, so the winner is the candidate who gets 270 or more of the votes.
This means that voters will decide contests at the state level rather than the national level, so it is possible for a candidate to get the most votes at the national level, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, but still be defeated by the electoral College.
All but two states have a “winner takes all” rule, whereby the candidate who wins the most votes receives all the votes from the state electoral college.
Battlefield states
Most states lean heavily to one side or the other, so the focus is generally on a dozen states in which any one of them could win. These are known as battlefield states. Florida is one of seven electoral battleground states where the results are likely to decide the election, and with its 29 electoral votes, it could decide who wins the presidency. In every election since 1964, the presidential candidate who won Florida also won the White House.
Eligible to vote
If you are a US citizen and 18 years of age or older, you should be eligible to vote in the presidential elections, which are held every four years.
However, many states have passed laws that require voters to show identification documents to prove who they are before they can vote.
These laws are often enforced by Republicans, who say the documents are necessary to protect against voter fraud.
But Democrats accuse them of using this as a form of voter suppression, as it is often the poorest minority voters who are unable to provide IDs like a driver’s license.
How people vote is a contentious issue this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some politicians are calling for broader use of postal ballots, but President Trump has said, with very little evidence, that this could result in more voter fraud.
House control
Today, all attention will be on Trump and Biden, but voters will also elect new members of Congress when they fill out their ballots.
Democrats already have control of the House, so they will seek to maintain that control, while also gaining control of the Senate, and if they have a majority in both houses, they will be able to block or delay President Trump’s plans if he is reelected.
Vote counting
It may take several days before each vote is counted, but it’s usually pretty clear who the winner is in the early hours of the next morning.
In 2016, Trump took the stage in New York around 3 a.m. to deliver his victory speech in front of a crowd of jubilant supporters.
But officials already warn that you may have to wait longer, possibly days, even weeks, for this year’s result due to the expected spike in postal ballots.
The last time the outcome was unclear within a few hours was in 2000, when the winner was not confirmed until a Supreme Court ruling was issued a month later.
If Biden wins the election, he would not immediately replace President Trump, as there is a transition period in place to give the new leader time to appoint cabinet ministers and make plans.
Early voting
Early voting is where people can cast their vote before scheduled election day, November 3, and this could be in person at the early voting tables or by absentee, that is, by mail, and this has increased constantly with every choice. year.
According to the U.S. Elections Project, as of November 2, 2020, more than 94 million Americans had voted early, either by mail or in person. This is already more than the total number of around 57.2 million early votes cast in the 2016 election.
The new president
The new president officially takes office on January 20, in a ceremony known as the inauguration, which takes place on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and after the ceremony, the new president addresses the House White to begin his four-year term.
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