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When people cast their vote, they are actually voting for a group of people called electors. The number of electors each state gets is equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives in Congress. A total of 538 electors form the Electoral College. … The candidate who gets 270 votes or more wins.
When people cast their vote, they are actually voting for a group of people called electors. The number of electors each state gets is equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives in Congress. A total of 538 electors form the Electoral College. … The candidate who gets 270 votes or more wins.
Who selects the electors? Choosing each State’s electors is a two-part process. First, the political parties in each State choose slates of potential electors sometime before the general election. Second, during the general election, the voters in each State select their State’s electors by casting their ballots.
The United States Electoral College is an example of a system in which an executive president is indirectly elected, with electors representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The votes of the public determine electors, who formally choose the president through the electoral college.
The United States Electoral College is a name used to describe the official 538 Presidential electors who come together every four years during the presidential election to give their official votes for President and Vice President of the United States. … No state can have fewer than three electors.
How many electoral votes are necessary to win the presidential election? 270. In order to become president, a candidate must win more than half of the votes in the Electoral College.
There are a total of 538 electoral votes, and the number of votes each state receives is proportional to its size — the bigger the state’s population the more “votes” it gets. … For California, this means we get 55 votes (2 senators and 53 members of the House of Representatives) — the most of any state.
Can citizens of U.S. Territories vote for President? No, the Electoral College system does not provide for residents of U.S. Territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands) to vote for President.
When citizens cast their ballots for president in the popular vote, they elect a slate of electors. Electors then cast the votes that decide who becomes president of the United States. Usually, electoral votes align with the popular vote in an election.
It is the electors’ vote that technically decides the election, and a candidate must gain 270 electoral votes to win the White House. In most elections, the winner of the popular vote also wins the majority of the electoral votes.
The Founding Fathers established the Electoral College in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.
Today, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) award all their electoral votes to the single candidate with the most votes statewide (the so-called “winner-take-all” system).
State | Number of Electoral Votes for Each State | For President |
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California | 55 | 55 |
Colorado | 9 | 9 |
Connecticut | 7 | 7 |
Delaware | 3 | 3 |
Why or why not? It should be abolished. The Electoral College doesn’t treat all Americans equally. It turns presidential elections into massive efforts to win the votes of a small number of voters in a few key states, rather than the support of the American people as a whole.
is plagued by three major defects: (1) the winner of the popular vote is not guaranteed the presidency; (2) electors are not required to vote in accord with the popular vote; and (3) any election might have to be decided in the House of Representatives.
Requirements to Hold Office
According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old, and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.
The result is a patchwork of uneven constitutional protections across the five remaining territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Residents of some territories are U.S. citizens by birth; others are not.
In national elections, Florida plays an important role as the largest bellwether state, occasionally determining the outcome of elections for U.S. President — as it did in 1876 and in 2000.
Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census. Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.
Maine and Nebraska are the only states not using this method. In those states, the winner of the popular vote in each of its congressional districts is awarded one elector, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electors.
Under the District Method, a State’s electoral votes can be split among two or more candidates, just as a state’s congressional delegation can be split among multiple political parties. As of 2008, Nebraska and Maine are the only states using the District Method of distributing electoral votes.
Most states require that all electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the most votes in that state. After state election officials certify the popular vote of each state, the winning slate of electors meet in the state capital and cast two ballots—one for Vice President and one for President.
New York has 29 electoral votes in the Electoral College.
Reagan won the election by a landslide, taking 489 electoral votes and 50.7% of the popular vote with a margin of 9.7%. Reagan received the highest number of electoral votes ever won by a non-incumbent presidential candidate.
1) The only way to abolish (get rid of) the Electoral College is with an amendment to the Constitution. 2) That would require 2/3rds vote in Congress & 3/4th of the states to ratify an amendment.
Direct election is a system of choosing political officeholders in which the voters directly cast ballots for the persons or political party that they desire to see elected. The method by which the winner or winners of a direct election are chosen depends upon the electoral system used.
Is the electoral college fair? Yes because it gives the smaller states more say in the election. Also the president has to go to every state. And the winner of the popular vote might not win the election.
The three most popular reform proposals include (1) the automatic plan, which would award electoral votes automatically and on the current winner-take-all basis in each state; (2) the district plan, as currently adopted in Maine and Nebraska, which would award one electoral vote to the winning ticket in each …
President of the United States of America | |
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Formation | June 21, 1788 |
First holder | George Washington |
Salary | $400,000 annually |
Website | www.whitehouse.gov |
The youngest person to assume the presidency was Theodore Roosevelt, who, at the age of 42, succeeded to the office after the assassination of William McKinley. The youngest to become president by election was John F. Kennedy, who was inaugurated at age 43.
The Constitution explicitly assigns the president the power to sign or veto legislation, command the armed forces, ask for the written opinion of their Cabinet, convene or adjourn Congress, grant reprieves and pardons, and receive ambassadors.
U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship. … Dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country.
It is in the Oceania group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. U.S. citizens can travel to all of the U.S. territories without a passport, except American Samoa. That is because American Samoa has its own immigration agency and sets its own rules.