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WASHINGTON (AFP, REUTERS) – The president of the United States is not elected by a majority of the popular vote. According to the Constitution, the candidate who obtains the majority of 538 voters, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president.
Here is the information about the voting process.
What does it take to win the presidency?
Instead of voting directly for the presidential candidate of their choice, Americans vote for 538 electors who then elect the president and vice president.
Each voter represents one vote. To win the White House, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority of the electoral votes, so 270 is the magic number.
When are the votes counted?
In-person votes are automatically tabulated and, in most cases, are ready to be announced hours or even minutes after the polls close.
This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, voting by mail has exploded. More than 80 million mail-in ballots have been mailed to voters as of mid-October, more than double the number in all of 2016.
Many states have begun processing mail-in ballots before Election Day, but cannot publish vote counts until polls close in precincts or precincts.
How are the votes counted?
Once the polls close, the votes cast on Election Day are sent from the precincts to the regional counting centers.
As electoral district ballots are counted, many counties will publish an “initial vote count” consisting of the first ballots in person and the first ballots by mail.
This year, many states have allocated additional time before Election Day to handle the anticipated increase in votes by mail, although some states do not begin processing and counting absentee ballots until Election Day.
When a precinct’s ballots have been counted, the results are added to the initial vote count and the precinct is said to have “reported.”
Will there be delays in the vote count?
Some states, including the battlefields of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, do not allow mail-in ballots to be counted until Election Day, which means it can potentially take weeks to count all votes.
An unofficial count will be released by a county clerk after all available votes have been counted on election night, then the numbers are checked two or three times in a process called counting.
Smokescreen?
Increasing mail-in votes can also give a false initial impression of a Democratic or Republican advantage in some of the more competitive states.
Polls show that mail-in ballots largely favor former Vice President Joe Biden, so states like Florida and North Carolina that count those votes first may appear to lean early toward the Democrat.
By contrast, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, President Donald Trump may appear to be taking the lead. These so-called red or blue mirages will disappear as the night progresses and more ballots are counted.
How does the media report on the vote count?
Traditionally, television networks and the US media keep track of the percentage of districts that have reported to give people an idea of how much the vote has been counted in a county.
However, that metric is less useful when there is a high volume of mail ballots, which often do not reflect the precinct the voter belongs to.
Some news organizations have chosen to present the results live as a percentage of the total expected votes in a county, rather than as a percentage of the districts that have reported. Total expected votes are calculated including mail-in ballots, early voting in person, turnout forecasts, and other data.
Some news organizations like the Associated Press have teams of election experts, known as decision tables, to analyze exit polls and voting results as the night progresses. They will call a race when they believe the data shows that a lagging candidate cannot overcome an opponent’s advantage.
In many states, historical voting trends combined with exit polls are so compelling that even though a very low percentage of votes have been counted, the state will be called upon to present a candidate.
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