The US Constitution only states that electors cannot be members of Congress or others who currently hold federal office. So they can be:.
Each political party with a candidate on the presidential ballot nominates or votes on its own slate of electors in the months prior to election day. States have their own rules for choosing electors. Roughly in line with the size of its population, each state gets as many electors as it has lawmakers in the US Congress representatives in the House and Senate. Once we know who won a state's popular vote, we know which party will appoint the electors for that state.
Electors are like rubber stamps that formalise how their state voted, so they are usually loyal supporters of their party. Electors have already pledged their support for a certain candidate, so they almost always vote as pledged. This changed in , when a historic number of so-called "faithless electors" - seven in total - voted for candidates other than those they had pledged to support five turned against Clinton, two against Trump.
It was the first election since to feature more than one faithless elector. States have since looked to strengthen their rules against faithless electors, pushing laws to remove them and have their votes retracted if they do not vote as pledged, a move backed by the US Supreme Court.
With the backing of several high-profile supporters, President Trump has called on Republican state legislatures in states he lost to throw out their popular vote results and appoint their own set of electors.
Election law experts are sceptical that this is possible and Republican state leaders have pushed back against this suggestion. A successful presidential candidate must get at least out of the votes that make up the electoral college. If electors vote based on the certified results of their states, they will give Joe Biden votes and Donald Trump , thus officially handing the presidency to Mr Biden.
By far the most famous elector this year is Hillary Clinton. Presidential electors in contemporary elections are expected, and in many cases pledged, to vote for the candidates of the party that nominated them. While there is evidence that the founders assumed the electors would be independent actors, weighing the merits of competing presidential candidates, they have been regarded as agents of the public will since the first decade under the Constitution.
They are expected to vote for the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the party that nominated them. Notwithstanding this expectation, individual electors have sometimes not honored their commitment, voting for a different candidate or candidates than the ones to whom they were pledged. In fact, the balance of opinion by constitutional scholars is that, once electors have been chosen, they remain constitutionally free agents, able to vote for any candidate who meets the requirements for President and Vice President.
Faithless electors have, however, been few in number in the 20th century, there was one each in , , , , , , , and , and have never influenced the outcome of a presidential election. Nomination of elector-candidates is another of the many aspects of this system left to state and political party preferences. General election ballots, which are regulated by state election laws and authorities, offer voters joint candidacies for President and Vice President for each political party or other group.
Thus, voters cast a single vote for electors pledged to the joint ticket of the party they represent. They cannot effectively vote for a president from one party and a vice president from another, unless their state provides for write-in votes.
Elections for all federal elected officials are held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years and presidential elections are held in every year divisible by four. Congress selected this day in ; previously, states held elections on different days between September and November, a practice that sometimes led to multiple voting across state lines and other fraudulent practices.
By tradition, November was chosen because the harvest was in and farmers were able to take the time needed to vote. Travel was also easier throughout the north during November, before winter had set in. Congress sets the date on which the electors meet, currently the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
The electors almost always meet in the state capital, usually in the capitol building or state house itself. The results are then endorsed, and copies are sent to the Vice President in his capacity as President of the Senate ; the secretary of state of their state; the Archivist of the United States; and the judge of the federal district court of the district in which the electors met.
Having performed their constitutional duty, the electors adjourn, and the Electoral College ceases to exist until the next presidential election. The final step in the presidential election process aside from the presidential inaugural on January 20 is the counting and certification of the electoral votes by Congress. The House of Representatives and Senate meet in joint session in the House chamber on January 6 of the year following the presidential election at pm.
The Vice President, who presides in his capacity as President of the Senate, opens the electoral vote certificates from each state in alphabetical order. He then passes the certificates to four tellers vote counters , two appointed by each house, who announce the results. The votes are then counted and the results are announced by the Vice President. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in argued over a lot of things, but one of their biggest debates was over how the United States should elect its president. Some among the Founding Fathers believed that direct nationwide election by the people would be the most On September 18, , the U.
House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College, the indirect system by which Americans elect the president and vice president. The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation.
To keep the convention from dissolving into Five times in history, presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College. These people are electors and their job is to choose the president and vice-president. The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task. The number of electors from each state is roughly in line with the size of its population. Each state gets as many electors as it has lawmakers in the US Congress representatives in the House and senators.
California has the most electors - 55 - while a handful of sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota and Washington DC have the minimum of three.
Each elector represents one electoral vote, and a candidate needs to gain a majority of the votes - or more - to win the presidency. Generally, states award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the poll of ordinary voters in the state. For example, if a candidate wins Alternatively, a candidate could win by a landslide and still pick up the same number of electoral votes.
It's therefore possible for a candidate to become president by winning a number of tight races in certain states, despite having fewer votes across the country.
There are only two states Maine and Nebraska which divide up their electoral college votes according to the proportion of votes each candidate receives.
This is why presidential candidates target specific "swing states" - states where the vote could go either way - rather than trying to win over as many voters as possible across the country. Every state they win gets them closer to the electoral college votes they need. What information do we collect from this quiz? Privacy notice. In fact, two out of the last five elections were won by candidates who had fewer votes from the general public than their rivals.
It is possible for candidates to be the most popular candidate among voters nationally, but still fail to win enough states to gain electoral votes.
0コメント