Every four years Americans plunge into a peaceful power struggle. The winner gets all the powers of the presidency; the loser goes home and tries to figure out what went wrong.
But America's presidential election system is complicated and whether you're voting for the first time, or for the tenth, you may have questions about how it all works.
Here's a guide to all the complexities of how Americans choose their presidential candidates and then decide which one will become the nation's chief executive.
What is a national party convention? It is a quadrennial event at which the party formally nominates its presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Do the delegates to national conventions perform any substantive function? They cast their votes for the person they want to be their party’s presidential nominee. But usually the choice of the party’s nominee has long since decided by the time the delegates get to the convention.
What the delegates end up doing is ratifying a choice that has already been made by the voters. The delegates also serve as colorful backdrop for the candidate’s acceptance speech.
They also do a lot of socializing at parties and sightseeing in the host city.
What are the convention host cities in 2008? The Democratic convention is in Denver; the GOP convention is in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
When was the last time there was a national convention at which the outcome was in any doubt? There has not been a convention at which the nominee was in any doubt since the Republican Convention in 1976 in Kansas City, where it looked like Ronald Reagan might be able to take the nomination from President Gerald Ford.
In the Democratic presidential contest, we heard an awful lot about the so-called superdelegates. Who or what are they?The category includes Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents and former vice presidents, retired congressional leaders, and all Democratic National Committee members, some of whom are appointed by party chairman Howard Dean.
They are not elected to be delegates by voters in a primary or caucus. Instead they are delegates ex officio by virtue of the office they hold, or by virtue of being members of the Democratic National Committee.
The Democratic Party created the superdelegate system in the 1980s to give the party’s elected officials more of a voice in choosing the presidential nominee.
Do superdelegates have extraordinary powers or privileges which regular delegates do not have? No, they don’t. They have one vote at the convention just as do the other delegates.
Has a presidential nominee ever had to step down after he had been nominated by his party? No.
Has a vice presidential nominee ever had to step down after he had been nominated by his party? Yes. In 1972, Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri was the Democratic vice presidential candidate chosen by Democratic presidential nominee Sen. George McGovern. Less than two weeks after the Democratic convention, news reports revealed that Eagleton had been hospitalized for exhaustion and depression in the 1960s and had undergone psychiatric and electroshock treatments.
At first McGovern announced support for Eagleton staying on the ticket but Eagleton soon stepped aside. McGovern and the Democratic National Committee then chose R. Sargent Shriver, former Peace Corps head and brother-in-law of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
In next year’s elections, will Americans be voting for presidential candidates or for electors? Voters will be casting their ballots on Nov. 4, 2008 for a slate of electors in each state and the District of Columbia. Those electors, in turn, will cast votes on Dec. 15, 2008 for candidates to whom they are pledged.
On the California ballot, for instance, will be a slate of 55 California Democratic electors pledged to the Democratic presidential candidate and a slate of 55 California Republican electors pledged to the Republican candidate.
A voter will chose one slate or the other (or perhaps the slate of a third party such as the Green Party).
How many electoral votes does it take to win the presidency? 270.
How are the 538 electors divided among the 50 states?They are divided roughly on the basis of population. States with large populations, such as California and Texas, get lots of electors; states with small populations, such as North Dakota and Vermont, get few.
No matter how small its population, each gets at least three electoral votes.
Each state gets a number of electors equal to the number of its members of the House of Representatives plus the number of its senators, which is always two since every state has two senators.
Tennessee, for example, has two senators and nine representatives, therefore it has 11 electoral votes.
How are the 435 House of Representatives allocated among the 50 states? A process called re-apportionment is used to allocate the members of the House. An apportionment has been made the basis of the decennial Census from 1790 to 2000, except following the 1920 census.
After the Census, states which have gained population get additional seats in the House of Representatives; states which have lost population, or lagged in growth, lose seats.
In 1940, for instance, New York had 45 members of the House; today it has only 29.
This allotment of House seats among the states is reflected in how electoral votes are allocated.
How many people does each member of the House of Representatives represent? The average size of each congressional district is about 650,000 people.
If a state has a large population of children under the age of 18, will it get relatively more representatives in the House, and thus more electoral votes than it would otherwise have? Yes, because children under age 18 are included in the Census apportionment population.
If a state has many illegal immigrants living in it, will it get more representatives in the House, and thus more electoral votes than it would otherwise have? Yes. All people, citizens and non-citizens, legal residents and illegal residents, are included in apportionment counts, although illegal immigrants may avoid contact with Census enumerators and therefore may be undercounted.
Is the allocation of presidential electors among the states perfectly proportional to each state’s population? No.
Wyoming, with a voting age population of about 370,000, has three electors. California, with a voting age population of 24.4 million, 66 times bigger than Wyoming’s, has 55 electors, which is only 18 times as many electors as Wyoming has.
This bonus for small states was one of the compromises made at the constitutional convention in 1787 in order to persuade the states with smaller populations to join the Union.
If a majority of a state’s voters in the Nov. 4 general election vote for the Republican ticket, then the Republican slate of electors is the one that is chosen. At that point the Democratic slate of electors does not matter.
Will the voters in each state know who the electors are? In some states, the electors’ names appear on the Nov. 4 ballot along with the presidential candidates’ names. In other states, the electors' names do not appear on the ballot.
Who selects the electors? The political parties choose the electors. They are often party loyalists selected as a reward for years of faithful service. They may be elected officials or persons who have a personal tie to the presidential candidate. In 2004 in New Hampshire, for example, one of the Democratic electors was former governor Jeanne Shaheen, whose husband Bill had run Democratic nominee John Kerry’s New Hampshire primary campaign.
What was the intention of the Framers of the Constitution as to the role of the electors?The intent was that “electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices,'' Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1952.
But the system has evolved into something quite different from what the Framers intended: electors today are almost always rubber stamps, chosen by their party to vote for its nominee.
What does the Constitution say about choosing electors? Article Two says, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors” equal to the number of senators and representatives to which the state is entitled in the Congress.
Is it up to each state’s legislature to decide how electors are chosen? Yes. A legislature could for instance, appoint a specific group of electors, such as retired judges, or it could choose electors randomly from a list of the state’s registered voters, or it could say the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide would get all of that state’s electoral votes.
The Constitution does not require that electors be chosen to reflect the popular vote in that state, although the tradition of following the popular vote is well established.
What is the Electoral College? It is the name applied collectively to all 538 electors.
The term “Electoral College” does not appear in the Constitution but was written into federal law in 1845, and appears in the United States Code (3 U.S.C. section 4), as "college of electors."
No, the Constitution requires each state’s electors to convene in the state capitol, but the electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia never all meet in one place at the same time.
Why don’t all 538 electors meet in one place at the same time? The Framers of the Constitution feared that, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, if the electors all met in one place, they would be vulnerable to “cabal, intrigue and corruption” and that foreign governments who sought “to gain an improper ascendant in our councils” might bribe electors.
Also, Hamilton warned, electors would be more prone to “heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people” if they met in one place.
Regardless of whether a candidate wins 51 percent of the votes in a state, or, in a multi-candidate race, say, 35 percent of the votes in a state, why does he or she get 100 percent of that state’s electoral votes? Forty-eight states have laws that mandate a winner-take-all system for electoral votes: The person with the statewide plurality of the votes gets all the electoral votes.
What does “plurality” mean? In this context it means “more votes than anybody else who ran.”
In an election in which there are more than two choices (as there usually are if you include Libertarian and other minor-party candidates), a plurality is the number of votes cast for the winning choice, even if that number is less than 50 percent.
Most electoral laws for national, state and local elections in the United States say the winner is the candidate who gets the plurality.
A few states require a majority in some elections: for instance in Louisiana, elections for governor, attorney general and other state offices have an all-inclusive primary as round one of the voting. If no candidate gets a majority in that first round, then the top two vote-getters, no matter what party they belong to, proceed to a final round.
Which states do not use the winner-take-all system? Maine and Nebraska. In those two states, one elector is awarded to the candidate receiving the most votes in each of the congressional districts, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to whoever gets the most votes statewide.
How is a majority different from a plurality? A majority is a number more than half of the total votes cast.
So how does a plurality vote work in presidential races? A few examples will make it clear: In the 1968 election, Richard Nixon, competing with two other major candidates, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, won only 38 percent of the vote in Tennessee, but he got all of Tennessee’s electoral votes.
In 1992, Bill Clinton, competing with two other major candidates, Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush won only 40 percent of the vote in Colorado, but he got all of its electoral votes.
But doesn’t this mean that the majority of voters in Colorado in 1992 – 60 percent of them – didn’t want Clinton to be president? Yes, it does mean that. But it also doesn’t matter legally. The plurality system is the one that has evolved: pluralities win, not always majorities.
Was there any state where Clinton won a majority in 1992? No. He won a majority only in the District of Columbia where he got 85 percent.
Are there moves afoot to change the electoral vote system? Maryland and New Jersey have enacted a measure called the National Popular Vote bill.
Under this law, a state's electoral votes would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The Maryland legislation would not take effect until the enactment of identical laws in enough other states to reach a majority of the electoral votes, that is, 270 out of 538.
But smaller states such as Vermont, South Dakota, and Alaska would lose clout under this proposal. The Electoral College system over-weights the power of small states because every state, no matter how small its population, gets at least three electoral votes.
Could Congress scrap the electoral vote system? It could begin to do so by proposing an amendment to the Constitution but that proposed amendment would need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Has Congress ever considered scrapping the Electoral College system? Yes, in 1969 the House approved a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and to provide for direct popular election of the president, with a minimum of 40 percent of the popular vote required and a runoff election between the top two finishers, if no one got 40 percent. The proposed amendment was killed in the Senate by senators from small states and Southern states.
If the electoral vote system appears to be undemocratic, what arguments do supporters of the electoral vote system use to defend it? Republican presidential contender Ron Paul argued in 2004 that the Founding Fathers “created the electoral college to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections.”
He added, “Not surprisingly, calls to abolish the Electoral College system are heard most loudly among left elites concentrated largely on the two coasts. Liberals favor a very strong centralized federal government.… The electoral college system threatens liberals because it allows states to elect the president, and in many states the majority of voters still believe in limited government and the Constitution.”
Why does the District of Columbia, which is not a state and has no voting representatives in Congress, get three electoral votes? Because Congress and the requisite number of state legislatures decided in 1961 to amend the Constitution to give D.C. residents the right to vote in presidential elections, but not in congressional elections.
A constitutional amendment rather than a mere statute was needed to do this because Article II of the Constitution specifically refers to states choosing presidential electors.
A House report, in explaining this constitutional amendment, said D.C. residents “have all the obligations of citizenship, including the payment of Federal taxes, of local taxes, and service in our Armed Forces. They have fought and died in every U.S. war since the District was founded.”
The amendment would remove the “anomaly of imposing all the obligations of citizenship without the most fundamental of its privileges.”
Has the District of Columbia always cast the majority of its votes for the Democratic candidate for president? Yes. No Republican has ever come close to winning in D.C. The best showing by a Republican was by Richard Nixon who got 22 percent of the vote in 1972.
Is it possible for a candidate to win the nationwide popular vote and yet lose the electoral vote? Yes, he can do so by amassing big vote margins in states in which his party is dominant, while losing other states narrowly.
It happened in 2000 when Al Gore won California with a margin of victory of nearly 1.3 million votes. Gore won New York with 1.7 million votes to spare.
But Gore lost New Hampshire by only 7,211 and lost the electoral vote, 271 to 266. He also lost Florida by 537, but many Democrats thought a re-count would have shown him winning Florida.
No. A candidate who wins 80 percent of the popular vote would necessarily have to have won many states by wide margins. Thus he or she would get all the electoral votes from most states, well more than enough electoral votes to give him or her more than the 270 needed.
The biggest percentage winner of the nationwide popular vote in any election since 1900 was Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Johnson won 61 percent of the votes cast. This gave him enough votes to win 45 out of 50 states, and 486 electoral votes.
Once they are chosen, what do each state’s electors do? On Dec. 15, in each state’s capitol, the state’s electors will meet to cast separate ballots for president and for vice president.
Can an elector pledged to vote for a candidate cast his or her vote for someone else?
Yes. But this rarely happens.
Since the first election in 1789, ten electors have decided to vote for a presidential candidate other than the one to whom they were pledged.
In 1948, for example, Tennessee elector Preston Parks was pledged to the Democratic candidate, Harry Truman, but instead cast his vote for States’ Rights presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. It didn’t affect the outcome of the election, as Truman won with 303 electoral votes.
Can an elector be punished if he does not vote for the candidate to whom he is pledged?
In some cases he could be: 25 states and the District of Columbia have laws binding electors.
In some states the penalty for electors who do not vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged is severe: in North Carolina for example, an elector who breaks his pledge can be fined $10,000.
Who counts the electoral votes to determine who in fact won the presidency?Congress will meet in joint session on Jan. 6, 2009 to count the votes of the electors.
If at least one member of the House and one member of the Senate object to any electoral votes from a state, then the House and Senate each go into separate sessions to debate and vote on the contested electoral votes. Both the House and the Senate must vote to reject the challenged electoral votes in order for them to be rejected.
In theory, there could be such an outcome.
The current system which is set forth in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution would have allowed for electors to choose, for example in the 2000 election, Al Gore for president and George W. Bush for vice president.
But the two major political parties choose tickets of president and vice presidential candidates and the electors (who are loyal party members) almost always do what the party expects and vote for the entire ticket.
What happens if the electoral vote ends up in a 269-269 tie, or in a multi-candidate field, if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes? The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution says that if no candidate gets a majority of the electors then the House of Representatives shall choose a president from among the top three vote-getters.
What procedure would the House use to go about choosing a president in this situation? In these circumstances, each state’s delegation in the House has one vote. So, for example, California’s 53 members of the House would caucus and vote as a bloc. Since there are more Democratic House members from California than Republican members, California’s one vote would go to the Democratic presidential candidate.
How many times has the House of Representatives chosen a president? Twice, in 1801, when it chose Thomas Jefferson, and 1825, when it chose John Quincy Adams.
The 1968 election came close to being thrown into the House when Nixon received 301 electoral votes, Humphrey 191 and Wallace 46.
Had there been a shift of three percent of the vote in Illinois and four percent in Tennessee, Nixon would have lost both those states and would have wound up with 264 electoral votes, six short of the number required.
What would happen if a state, due to litigation and ballot disputes, can’t finish its vote count and therefore can’t choose its electors by the date on which electors are supposed to meet, Dec. 13? It is likely that the legislature of that state would appoint a slate of electors, rather than allowing the state to lose the opportunity to have some voice in the election.
Can citizens in U.S. Territories, such as Puerto Rico and American Samoa, vote for president? No. Article II of the Constitution only refers to electors who are chosen by the states, although the 23rd amendment, ratified in 1961, does provide for electors chosen by the District of Columbia.
Because the major political parties have decided under their own rules to give Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and other U.S. territories some role in the presidential nominating process. Federal law regulates the prim only to a limited extent; most decisions are left to the political parties.
How many states have same-day registration — in other words, you can register on Election Day and cast your vote? Seven states allow voters to register on Election Day: Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
In how many states are voters required to present a government-issued photo ID before they can cast their ballot? According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 24 states ask voters to show identification prior to voting. Seven of these states specify that voters must show a photo ID.
But “all states have some sort of recourse for voters without identification to cast a vote,” such as a provisional ballot, according to NCSL.
Yes, you can, assuming that you register to vote by the deadline set by your state and assuming that you meet the qualifications for voting.
They vary somewhat from state to state, but basically you must be at least 18 years old, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of the state in which you are voting.
In Florida, to take one example, you must also not have been judged to be mentally incapacitated with respect to voting. You must also not have been convicted of a felony in Florida, or any other state, without your civil rights having been restored.
In Florida, you must also sign an oath swearing that you “will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Florida.”
In a few states, such as Virginia, once he gets out of jail a convicted felon must obtain a pardon or a restoration of citizenship from the governor in order to vote. But in many states the felon’s voting rights are automatically restored once he finishes serving his sentence.
Yes, you can. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, enacted in 1986, sets up procedures for you to vote using an absentee ballot. Your state of residence for voting purposes is the state where you last lived prior to going overseas. See the for more information.
Is voting in presidential elections regulated by the states or by the federal government? Voting in presidential elections is regulated by both the states and federal law.
For example, states can set different rules for where to vote, for recounts, and whether to allow voting by mail.
But Congress has imposed some mandates. For example, the 26th amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1971, required that 18 year olds be permitted to vote in every state. And the 1975 expansion of the Voting Rights Act requires bilingual ballots in places where there are minorities who do not speak English.
In how many places in the United States are bilingual ballots mandated by federal law? There are 371 counties and other jurisdictions in 30 states which are mandated to provide bilingual ballots. The languages covered include Spanish, Vietnamese, Navajo, and Chinese.
No, this has never happened.
The closest this has come to happening was on Feb. 13, 1933, when onetime bricklayer and transient Guiseppe Zangara fired shots at President-elect Franklin Roosevelt just after he finished giving a speech in Miami.
Zangara missed Roosevelt, but one of his shots hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who subsequently died from his wounds. Zangara was convicted of murder and executed on March 20, 1933.
Here is what would happen if a president-elect were to die after the general election on Nov. 4, but before the electors cast their ballots on Dec. 15, according to After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College published by the American Enterprise Institute.
If the president-elect died, the national committee of the president-elect’s political party would meet and choose a new presidential nominee, and thus a new president-elect.
The electors, when they meet in the various state capitals on Dec. 15, are free to choose whomever they want, but in all likelihood would go along with the choice made by the national party committee.
If the president-elect died after Congress met on Jan. 6, 2009 to count the votes of the electors, then the vice president-elect would become president on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
What is a primary and what is caucus? How do they differ? In a primary, voters simply cast their ballots and then go on with the rest of their day.
But a caucus in more participatory, with supporters showing up in person at designated sites throughout the state, such as a high school gymnasium, and standing up to be counted for their candidate.
In Iowa caucuses, there’s debate and jockeying among those who show up, as supporters of one candidate try to woo the undecided caucus participants.
How are a caucus and a primary alike? In both, voters are ultimately choosing delegates to their party’s national convention, the body that formally nominates their presidential candidate.
Why do some states have primary elections and other states have presidential caucuses? State legislatures and state parties determine which form of balloting they prefer. In some states such as New Hampshire, the primary has become well entrenched and legislators are not likely to switch to a different system.
Can independent voters take part in a political party’s primary? It depends on state law. In New Hampshire, for example, independent voters can go the polling place on primary day and ask for the ballot of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Then, once they cast their ballot, they can fill out a form and switch back to being independent.
California used a similar system in its Feb. 5, 2008, presidential primary.
Why do Iowa and New Hampshire get to vote first and not states with larger populations, such as California? The short answer is tradition and inertia.
The preferred place of Iowa and New Hampshire is cemented by tradition, by party rules and by the difficulty of getting the state legislatures and political parties to agree on how to alter the process. While Iowa and New Hampshire have traditionally cast the first votes, Democrats in 2008 added Nevada and South Carolina to their early schedule in an attempt to add more variety to their electorate. The Republicans also had an early primary in South Carolina.
How and when did the Iowa caucuses become important? Iowa’s prominence dates to Jimmy Carter’s effort there in 1976. As the campaign started, Carter was a little-known former one-term Georgia governor, a pygmy in a field that included heavyweights such as Sen. Henry Jackson, the Democrats’ pre-eminent national security expert.
But in the Iowa caucuses, an event in which just 38,500 people took part (and which Jackson chose to bypass), Carter won 28 percent of the vote, finishing second to “uncommitted,” which was the preference of 37 percent of the Democrats who took part.
So why did people pay attention to Iowa in 1976? A front-page article by R.W. Apple in the New York Times the morning after the caucuses helped make Carter’s performance a big story, transforming him into a credible contender for the nomination. Carter “scored an impressive victory,” Apple opined.
How does the Iowa Republican contest differ from the Democratic caucuses? The Iowa Republican Party conducts a straw vote of those attending the caucuses.
Democratic caucus-goers form different groups, with each of the contenders needing to have at least 15 percent of the attendees at each precinct caucus in order to get any delegates from that precinct.
How many people take part in the Iowa caucuses? In 2008, more than 227,000 people took part in the Democratic caucuses, up sharply from 122,000 in 2004.
Among Republicans, there were around 120,000 caucus-goers, up from 86,000 in 2000, the last time there was a competitive Republican contest in Iowa.
How many people vote in the New Hampshire primary? More than 230,000 people voted in the Republican primary on Jan. 8, 2008, while more than 280,000 voted in the Democratic primary.
How has New Hampshire proven to be decisive in past elections? Since 1920, New Hampshire has been the first state in the nation to conduct a presidential primary. Its importance dates back to 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower beat Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio to win the New Hampshire primary, putting Ike on track to securing the Republican nomination.
On the Democratic side, too, New Hampshire has a history of making or breaking candidacies. For instance, Granite State voters essentially drove President Lyndon Johnson out of the race in 1968 by giving him a disappointing 49 percent and giving insurgent Sen. Eugene McCarthy 41 percent. Pundits deemed this a victory for McCarthy.
