Question

What are the different parts of the election process? Make sure summarize what happens during each part

How do you feel about the Electoral College? Should we amend the Constitution to get rid of it or keep it?

Answer 1

The US Presidential Election takes place every four years on the first Tuesday in November. Candidate must be at least 35 years old, born in the United States and lived in the US for the previous 14 years in order to be eligible. Traditionally, candidates make their intention to run for President public in the year before the election takes place. Since there is no national authority which conducts the elections, local authorities organize the election with the help of thousands of administrators. The election process starts with the primaries and caucuses in January or February of the election year. Primaries are organized by state and local authorities using a secret ballot to cast votes for hopeful presidential candidates from each of the major parties. Caucuses are private events organized by political parties themselves. Here, voters decide publicly which candidate they prefer. Afterwards, organizers count the votes and calculate how many delegates each candidate receives. Each state, the District of Columbia and some US territories are allocated a number of delegates, usually determined by population size. In addition, a formula is used to adjust the number by “rewarding” states which, for example, voted for the last party’s Presidential candidate. These delegates represent their state in the national party convention and vote to decide each party's presidential candidate. The national convention of each party is held in the summer of an election year. A majority of delegates’ votes is needed to receive the nomination of the party, which is often already reached and known before the national conventions take place. If no majority is reached, the national convention is where the presidential candidate will be selected. After the nominee for each political party have been chosen, the presidential candidates go head-to-head campaigning throughout the country. They go on rallies and take part in debates to win the support of voters across the nation. Moreover, they explain their plans and views to society. The U.S. Constitution’s Requirements for a Presidential Candidate are:

A natural-born citizen of the United States.

A resident of the United States for 14 years.

At least 35 years old.

Note: A Natural Born Citizen is someone born with U.S. citizenship. This includes any child born “in” the United States, the children of United States citizens born abroad, and those born abroad of one citizen parent.Usually in December.The US the president is elected by the institution called the Electoral College.The Constitution only states that the candidate who receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College becomes president. It says nothing about the popular vote.The intent of the framers was to filter public opinion through a body composed of wiser, more experienced people; the framers did not want the president to be chosen directly by the people.Each state gets a certain number of electors, based on each state’s total number of representation in Congress.Each of the 50 US states and the capital Washington DC (a district which does not belong to any state) have a set number of electors which reflects their size. California is the most populated (over 38 million people) and has 55 electoral votes – more than any other. On the other hand, a state such as Montana, which is geographically large but has a relatively small population (just over one million people) – only has three electors.Aside from Maine and Nebraska, if a candidate gets the most votes within a state they receive that state’s full quota of electoral college votes.Each elector casts one electoral vote following the general election.There are a total of 538 electoral votes.The candidate that gets more than half (270) wins the election.One of the most troubling aspects of the electoral college system is the possibility that the winner might not be the candidate with the most popular votes. Four presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016—were elected with fewer popular votes than their opponents, and Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives after winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote in 1824. In 18 elections between 1824 and 2000, presidents were elected without popular majorities—including Abraham Lincoln, who won election in 1860 with under 40 percent of the national vote. During much of the 20th century, however, the effect of the general ticket system was to exaggerate the popular vote, not reverse it. For example, in 1980 Ronald Reagan won just over 50 percent of the popular vote and 91 percent of the electoral vote; in 1988 George Bush received 53 percent of the popular vote and 79 percent of the electoral vote; and in 1992 and 1996 William J. Clinton won 43 and 49 percent of the popular vote, respectively, and 69 and 70 percent of the electoral vote. Third-party candidates with broad national support are generally penalized in the electoral college—as was Ross Perot, who won 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and no electoral votes—though candidates with geographically concentrated support—such as Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond, who won 39 electoral votes in 1948 with just over 2 percent of the national vote—are occasionally able to win electoral votes.The divergence between popular and electoral votes indicates some of the principal advantages and disadvantages of the electoral college system. Many who favour the system maintain that it provides presidents with a special federative majority and a broad national mandate for governing, unifying the two major parties across the country and requiring broad geographic support to win the presidency. In addition, they argue that the electoral college protects the interests of small states and sparsely populated areas, which they claim would be ignored if the president was directly elected. Opponents, however, argue that the potential for an undemocratic outcome—in which the winner of the popular vote loses the electoral vote—the bias against third parties and independent candidates, the disincentive for voter turnout in states where one of the parties is clearly dominant, and the possibility of a “faithless” elector who votes for a candidate other than the one to whom he is pledged make the electoral college outmoded and undesirable. Many opponents advocate eliminating the electoral college altogether and replacing it with a direct popular vote. Their position has been buttressed by public opinion polls, which regularly show that Americans prefer a popular vote to the electoral college system. Other possible reforms include a district plan, similar to those used in Maine and Nebraska, which would allocate electoral votes by legislative district rather than at the statewide level; and a proportional plan, which would assign electoral votes on the basis of the percentage of popular votes a candidate received. Supporters of the electoral college contend that its longevity has proven its merit and that previous attempts to reform the system have been unsuccessful.so every system has a pros and cons ,we have to adjust within itself.