Electing the President

Electing the President

Step I. Declaration of Candidates

About a year before the presidential election, people who believe that they might be able to win the election for president announce that they are running for president. These candidates are usually members of either the Democratic or Republican parties. The Democrats and Republicans are the two major political parties in the United States. Because the United States has two parties that control most of the political power in the government, the U.S. is said to have a two-party system.

Not all people who run for president, however, are Democrats or Republicans. Each presidential election, several independent candidates, or candidates that belong to neither the Democratic nor Republican parties, announce that they are running for president as well. Independent candidates represent another party (sometimes also called a third party) that is neither Democratic nor Republican.

No third party candidate has ever won a presidential election, but some have received several million votes for president. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed his own party called the Progressive Party (or the “Bull Moose Party”, as Teddy called it), and received a large percentage of the popular vote. In 1992, Independent candidate Ross Perot, running for the Reform Party, won 19 percent of the vote in his race against Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George Bush, Sr. While this may not sound like much, it was actually one of the highest percentages of votes ever received by an independent candidate for president.

1. What do we call people who are running for an office like President of the United States? When do they usually announce that they are running?

2. What are the two major parties in the U.S. called?

3. Why do we say that the U.S. has a “two-party system” of government?

4. What are two different names that we call candidates that are neither Democratic nor Republican?

5. Who were two famous third party candidates, and what parties did they run for?

Electing the President

Step II. Political Parties Choose Their Candidates

During the spring of the election year, the two major parties need to decide which candidates that are running have the best chance of possibly winning the election in November. There are two ways to help determine which candidates have the most support from the voters: primaries and caucuses.

Primary elections are held in 36 of the 50 states. These are “practice” elections held in the spring to find out which of the candidates running from each party would get the most votes from the people in different states. In a primary, democrats run against other democrats, republicans against other republicans. The people show up to vote and choose which candidate from that party they think they might vote for in the real election. This shows the parties which candidate has the most support and has the best chance of winning in the general election in November.

There are two types of primaries in the United States: open and closed. In an open primary, any registered voter from any party may participate. In a closed primary, only members from a specific political party may go and vote. For instance, in a closed republican primary, only registered republicans could participate in the vote. It is up to the parties in each state as to whether their primaries are open or closed.

Fourteen states in the U.S. do not hold primaries. Instead, they hold special nominating meetings called caucuses. A caucus is a gathering of party officials to meet and choose which of the candidates running for president they like best. Caucuses have the same purpose as primary elections, but here it is done in a formal meeting instead of an election.

Candidates that don’t do well in either the primaries or caucus meetings in the spring might decide that it is too costly to continue running in a presidential election that they will probably lose. As candidates begin to drop out of the race, they usually endorse, or put their support, behind another candidate that is still running. They do this in hopes that they might be considered for a job later down the road if the candidate they help gets elected.

1. When in a presidential election do primaries and caucuses occur?

2. How do primary elections help to determine candidates for president?

3. What is the difference between an open and closed primary?

4. What is a caucus?

5. Give two reasons why a candidate who is losing in the primaries and caucuses would choose to drop out of the presidential race.

Electing the President

Step III. National Convention

During the summer of an election year, the two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, meet to pick their one candidate that they believe could win the election for president in November. These national nominating conventions are usually huge, televised events filled with tradition. They are held in a major American city, and last for an entire week.

After the primary elections are held in the spring, a few candidates are left from each party still running for president. It is important for the parties to choose one, and only one, candidate to represent them in the general election held in November. If a party ran more than one candidate for president, voters who always vote for that party might not know which of their party’s candidates to pick. This would allow the other party’s candidate to receive a majority of votes and win the election. Therefore, it is important to choose one candidate at their national conventions to represent each party in the election.

In addition to nominating their candidate for president, political parties also use the national convention to present and approve their party’s platform. A platform is a party’s written statement that describes its views on the major issues, and its plans for the United States if elected. Each part of a party’s platform is called a plank, and planks can range in topic from gun control and abortion to taxes and environmental issues. The debate at a convention over the party’s platform can be heated and intense. Because the conventions are televised, this allows the whole country to watch the party in action, and gives the party an opportunity to win the support of voters across the country for their platform and candidate.

1. When in a presidential election are national conventions held?

2. Why is it important for each political party to choose only one candidate to run for president?

3. What is a platform?

4. Why is a televised national convention an important part of the process we use to select a new president?

Electing the President

Step IV. Pre-Election Campaigns

Between August and early November of the election year, candidates for president campaign for office. Each party, the Democrats and Republicans, by this time has chosen a single person to run for president from their party. It is now the candidate’s job to get out there and meet as many people as possible and try to win as many votes as they can before election day. Party candidates tour the country giving speeches, meeting voters, and even participating in debates with the other candidates. During this time, there are a few groups that try to influence not only the voters, but also the candidates themselves in an attempt to affect the election.

Interest groups are organizations of people with a similar interest that try to influence government policies and decisions. It is important to interest groups that a president is elected that supports their ideas or opinions, so they work for or against different candidates in presidential elections. Some of the more powerful interest groups are the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These and other interest groups want a president that will help them meet their goals and further their cause.

Interest groups contribute to candidate’s election campaigns through Political Action Committees, or PAC’s, for short. PAC’s are groups that raise money to donate to a particular candidate’s election campaign. Candidates can receive money from PAC’s to help them pay for the cost of campaigning, which can include traveling the country, buying TV and radio advertisements, and paying for a staff to help run their campaign. PAC’s contributed nearly $260 million to candidates running in the 2000 presidential election.

Modern election campaigns have become very expensive. This has caused changes in the way that presidents are elected. For instance, candidates must now do a lot of fund-raising to help pay for campaign costs. This means that wealthy individuals have an advantage over people who don’t have as much money, which limits the opportunities that citizens have to run for public office. It also means that special interest groups and PAC’s, which can offer lots of money to help candidates, have more influence over the election than they ever have before. To prevent this, new laws, called campaign finance reform, have been recently passed to limit the amount that individuals and organizations can contribute to an individual candidate.

1. When in a presidential election does the pre-election campaigning occur?

2. What are interest groups? What are some powerful interest groups in the United States?

3. What are PAC’s? Why have they changed the way that American presidents are elected?

4. How have rising campaign costs changed the way that U.S. presidential elections are held? How could campaign finance reform change this?

Electing the President

Step V. Election Day

Election Day in the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution, is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. All of the campaigning and speeches that the candidates have done all lead up to this point in the election process. On Election Day, the registered voters in the U.S. go to the polls and vote for the candidate of their choice. This called the popular vote. It is not this popular vote, however, that elects the president.

In the United States, voters who vote for president on Election Day are actually casting votes for a group of people called electors. Electors will eventually cast the official vote for president. A vote for a Democratic candidate on election night, for example then, is a vote for the Democratic elector in that state. A vote for the Republican candidate is a vote for the Republican elector.

The names of the electors may or may not appear on the ballot. Each state has the same number of electors that is equal to the total number of senators and representatives it has in Congress. In addition, Washington, D.C., which has no senators or representatives in Congress, has three electors. The nation’s 538 electors make up the Electoral College, and it is these people who will cast the electoral vote for president.

The presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in a state then wins all of that state’s electoral votes. This is called a winner-take-all system. It means that the candidate who had the most people in a state vote for them will receive all of that particular state’s electoral votes in the electoral college. Therefore, if a candidate wins in a state by just a few votes, ALL of that state’s electoral votes are awarded to them in the electoral college. It is possible for a candidate to receive more of the popular vote than his or her opponent, but still lose the election, because the election of the president is based on the electoral vote, not the popular vote. Once a candidate receives a majority of electoral votes (270) on election night, the election is over and a new president has been decided. However, the actual electoral votes are not cast until the middle of December.

1. When is Election Day, according to the Constitution?

2. What is the popular vote? How is it different from the electoral vote?

3. Who are electors? What role do they play in electing the president?

4. What is the winner-take-all system in a presidential election?

Electing the President

Step VI. The Electoral College

After Election Day in early November, the votes cast in the election for president (called electoral votes) by a group of special voters called the Electoral College are sent to the president of the Senate in mid-December. These votes represent the votes cast in the 50 states by the voters of the United States on Election Day. In early January, both the Senate and House of Representatives count the votes in a special meeting. The candidate who receives a majority of these votes (270) is then declared the next president of the United States.

What happens if no presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral votes? In that case, the president is chosen by the House of Representatives in a special session from among the top three candidates. The House of Representatives has been called upon to choose the president like this only twice--once in 1800 and again in 1824. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were elected in this way.

The Electoral College, this collection of 538 votes that represent the 50 states and Washington, D.C., was originally designed by the writers of the Constitution because they believed that the average citizen in the early days of the country was not informed enough to choose a good president. In recent years, there have been serious discussions about doing away with the Electoral College and having a direct election for president, one in which the candidate who receives the most popular votes, or votes cast by the people, would win the election. The controversy during the presidential election of 2000 has only intensified this debate.