ELECTION OF U.S. PRESIDENT

ELECTION OF U.S. PRESIDENT

Steps in electing the U.S. President

The President is elected every four years and can serve for only two terms. According to the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a native-born citizen of at least 35 years of age and a resident for at least 14 years.

(1) The Ticket:

Presidential candidates choose their running mate to be Vice-President.

 

(2) Nov 6, Election Day:

The President is not chosen directly by the people but by an Electoral College. The winner of the popular vote takes all the Electoral College votes in very state apart from Maine and Nebraska.

 

(3) Dec 17, Electoral College:

President and Vice-President formally elected by body of 538 electors – candidate with 270 electoral votes wins. Electors equal to total membership of congress – 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, plus three electors from District of Columbia.

 

(4) Jan 6, Congress:

Electoral votes formally counted. If no candidate wins 270 majority, president is selected by House of Representatives.

 

(5) Jan 20, 2013:

Inauguration oaths taken – new presidential term starts.

 

General Information:

Since 1824, four presidents have lost popular have lost popular vote but won presidency: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), and George W. Bush (2000).

It may be confusing, it may not be perfect, but it has gone on like clockwork for over 200 years providing America stability, say supporters of the U.S. election system as it is set to be tested again the Tuesday's tight presidential race. The U.S. presidential election system, featuring the Electoral College, was established by Article Two of the constitution, as a compromise between those who wanted Congress to choose the President, and those who preferred a national popular vote.

On Election Day, voters, generally, cast votes to select the candidate of their choice, but the ballot is actually voting to select the electors of a candidate.

Under the Constitution, each State is allocated a number of Electoral College electors equal to the number of its Senators and House Representatives in the U.S. Congress. The District of Columbia is given three electors.

Most States, excluding Maine and Nebraska, employ the "winner-takes-all" system, meaning whichever ticket wins the popular vote wins all of the State's electoral votes.

Any pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates who gain at least 270 electoral votes of the total 538 are claimed the winners.

Though the president and vice-president elect can be yielded on the Election Day, the official voting for them by the Electoral College is held on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.

The Electoral College is but one of the many quirks in the U.S. electoral system. Yet there is not central body to supervise the elections. There is a Federal Election Commission (FEC), but it only supervises and enforces campaign fiancé laws.

The process of registering voters, conducting the balloting and counting the votes is left to State and local election officials, who have varying degrees of independence in how they do it.

In yet another quirk, questions of public policy may also be placed on the ballot for voter approval or disapproval. For instance, election 2012 in has more than 1,000 issues including right to die in Massachusetts, gay marriage in Maine, abortion in Florida and Montana, death penalty in California and segregation in Alabama.

Though since 2000 America has moved toward adoption of direct recording electronic (DRE) devices, some States still have paper ballots where one has to an "X" in front of a candidate's name to "laver" machines to the controversial "punch-card" machines used in Florida.

Complicated, one may wonder. Yet there is reluctance to change. For as Thomas Neale, a specialist in American national government at Congressional Research Service, says "It's not perfect" but "we've had a pretty good record, 47 of 51" of popular vote winners becoming President.

But more important, an amendment of the Constitution requires ratification by three-fourths of the States, and the states are not going to give up their turf anytime soon.