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We still don’t know if it will be Joe Biden or Donald Trump who will live in the White House for the next four years. So far it has been a uniform election and the result still holds in four major states.
Many good questions have come to NRK’s answers. Here are answers to some of the most common questions about the US presidential election.
1. What if there is a count in a state?
If there is a recount, since everything indicates that it will be in Georgia, it will be more time before the result is obtained in the state in question. completely decided. Then all votes that have already been counted must be counted again.
There are different rules from state to state when it comes to counting. In some states it happens automatically. In other states, presidential candidates can seek reelection if less than one percentage point separates them. Often times, the candidate must pay the recount himself: In Wisconsin, Trump must pay the recount himself, if the state accepts the president’s demand for a recount.
What the result of a count will be depends on how different the new result is from the first result. In previous polls, it has rarely earned more than a couple hundred votes.
2. Has the count in previous elections resulted in a different result?
In modern times, the count has not changed the outcome in any state in a presidential election.
In 2016, Jill Stein of the Green Party called for a recount in the rust belt states, which was crucial when Donald Trump won. As is well known, that did not change the outcome of the election, and President Trump assumed the presidency of the White House on January 20, 2017.
In 2000, the Florida referendum went to the Supreme Court. With 537 votes, George W. Bush won the state over Al Gore, and Bush became president, even after the referendum.
Here you can read ten things to know about the presidential election.
3. Will Trump go to the Supreme Court?
Donald Trump has previously said that he will involve the Supreme Court if he loses. But it can take a long time, the process must begin in lower courts and the United States Supreme Court must approve the case.
– To have a lawsuit going to the Supreme Court, you have to have a pretty good case, and then you have to have an interesting legal question that the United States Supreme Court thinks you should decide, says Associate Professor Sofie Høgestøl.
Recount-related issues have been raised before in the Supreme Court – it happened, for example, in the state of Florida in 2000.
NRK has a companion article on how Trump is trying to use the courts to win the election. You can read it here.
4. Can Trump stay put in four years if he loses?
If he can. The Constitution of the United States establishes that no one who has been president for two terms, that is, for a total of eight years, can stand for re-election.
Donald Trump has been President of the United States for four years. Therefore, it is not illegal for him to stand for reelection in the next election, if he loses. There are presidential elections in the United States every four years, so the next chance for Trump will be in 2024, if he does not win this election.
Fun fact: Grover Cleveland became president of the United States in 1884. He lost reelection in 1888, but was reelected in 1892. So it is not inconceivable that a president who loses reelection could get another term, but that is one of the oddities. .
5. What is the reason that different media companies have different numbers?
NRK has a companion article that answers this question. You can read it here.
The United States does not have a central vote count on Election Day. The votes are counted by the states themselves. The media organizations then collect votes from election officials in every county in the United States. When organizations, such as the AP news agency (from which NRK gets its figures) consider that enough votes have been counted for a winner to be announced, they declare the state the winner.
NRK has chosen to use the AP news agency because they have the most comprehensive apparatus for reporting numbers and for many years they have provided numbers to the largest media networks. You can read about how AP calculates the results here.
6. What does it mean for Norway who wins?
It will probably be more than we have seen if Trump wins, that the United States runs more alone. Trump has removed the United States from many international agreements, including the international climate agreement. Joe Biden has said that the first thing he will do if he becomes president is to re-sign the United States to the Paris Agreement.
– With Biden, I think we will see an America that returns to its old role in the world. Where they get more internationally involved and reconnect with international agreements, says NRK journalist Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth.
On November 3, 2020, Americans elect their next president. Donald Trump is running for Republican re-election. Joe Biden is running for president of the Democrats. In the last presidential election, Trump won despite Hillary Clinton getting the most votes. How can that happen? Here are two things you need to know to understand the American election.
7. In the period between now and January, can Trump still make any changes if he loses?
Trump will remain in office until the end of his term, on January 20. It is a tradition not to make major changes during that period, out of respect for the democratic process. However, President Barack Obama, who was president before Trump, issued a series of presidential decrees in the months leading up to Trump’s installation.
– Trump is known to go his own way, he can probably still make changes. But they will be quickly reversed if a new government is established, says Skjeseth.
Elections for the Senate are underway. How important is it?
If the Democrats win a majority in the Senate, they can go through a lot of politics with Joe Biden as president. On Friday night, a new senator reached the Democrats, but there are still five seats that are unclear.
This choice is also very even, and it will probably take time before we get a final answer.
– If Biden becomes president, but Republicans retain a majority in the Senate, it will greatly limit his room for maneuver, says Skjeseth.
Faktisk. Has not reviewed incorrect information that abounds about the US elections in Norway. You can read about it here.
9. What are the rules that voters can vote by?
In some states, voters can vote for the candidate of their choice. But in practice, the majority of voters vote based on the outcome of elections in the state. If Biden wins in Pennsylvania, all 20 state voters will vote for Biden when they meet in December.
It has happened that voters have not voted according to what they were supposed to vote for. Like in the 2016 election, when seven voters voted against the result in their state. But it has not happened that the outcome of the election itself has changed because voters have voted differently than they should.
Each state has a certain number of voters that are determined primarily by the population of the state.
The state of California has the highest number of voters (55), and the states with the lowest population have only three.
There are a total of 538 voters in all 50 states.
Voters (and women) have one vote each and vote for the candidate for whom the majority in the state has voted.
To win the presidential election, candidates must cross the 270 electoral vote limit.
In all but two states, the candidate receives the most votes all electoral votes in the state. The exceptions are Nebraska and Maine, where the electoral vote is distributed in proportion to the popular vote.
10. Why does it take so much longer to count votes in some states than others?
There are many votes to count. Many of the states have received a record number of early votes, far more than they are used to.
It takes more time to count these early votes. It’s more paperwork and requires precision.
There is another factor that makes some states take less time: In those states where a candidate has an overwhelming majority, the last votes will not necessarily mean that much. Thus, the state is declared, or “called,” before all the votes have been counted.
The next state to be decided can now decide the choice. Therefore, it is important to get it right the first time.
When Donald Trump constantly refuses to answer whether he will accept a possible electoral defeat, the whole world begins to wonder.
11. What about postal votes?
Some states have sent ballots to everyone who has the right to vote. In other places, voters must order the ballot themselves.
Regardless, the voter receives the ballots to be used in the election that are sent home, where they are completed and placed in marked and secured envelopes and then sent back through the regular postal system or special ballot boxes that are placed in cities and towns. neighborhoods.
When the electoral authorities receive the ballot, they verify the signature of the sender, that the ballot has been filled out correctly before scanning it into the system to be counted.
In some states, local election authorities must receive votes by mail before Election Day, others on Election Day, while still others accept that the ballot envelope is postmarked on Election Day. Several states have extended both the filing deadline and the enumeration deadline this year. Some allow votes to be cast up to 14 days after the election. Others have not.
