I worked with writer Amy Sennett on this piece. Believe me when I say that explaining how the presidential election works to Chinese readers in 1,200 words is a true challenge, but Amy did brilliantly. It was fun to work with her on this piece.
Demystifying the U.S. Election
By Amy J. Sennett
With the U.S. presidential primaries in full swing—Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are still trading victories and Republican John McCain is struggling to shore up his conservative base—the U.S. election has rarely appeared more important or more complicated. Many people, including many Americansm, are struggling to understand how the U.S. chooses its next president.
The election process is complex, but the U.S. Constitution presents surprisingly few qualifications to be President of the United States. Candidates must be natural-born U.S. citizens, over the age of 35, and have lived permanently in the U.S. for at least 14 years.
The first complexity arises with the 50 different presidential ballots—one for each state—and their differing requirements. At least 20 states demand a minimum number of supporter signatures and fundraising dollars in order for a candidate to be listed on their presidential ballot, and the only way to have a real shot at the White House is to get on the ballot in all 50 states. While an individual state ballot may list many candidates, an independent candidate may have to gather as many as 750,000 signatures and fork over thousands of dollars of filling fees to get on every presidential ballot. That figure does not begin to account for tens of million of dollars in nation-wide advertising and campaign expenses.
Given the high cost of running a national campaign, most candidates seek the support of one of the two major American political parties—the Republicans or the Democrats. (The United States has several other national parties such as the Green Party and the Communist Party, but they lack mainstream support and significant financial resources.) Thanks to individual state ballot laws, Democratic and Republican nominees are automatically placed on all 50 presidential ballots. Alternative parties have no such guarantee.
Each party has a different platform – a set of policy positions – and their sources of fundraising reflect those positions. The Republican Party represents more conservative ideas, opposing gay civil unions and abortion rights, while favoring a smaller federal government and lower taxes. Republicans, known as the right, have a reputation for being strong on national defense, and most support increased troops and armory for the war in Iraq. Republicans typically receive financial support from wealthy business interests, military brass, and, more recently, conservative Christian voters. The Democratic Party represents more liberal social views, oftentimes supporting gay civil unions and abortion rights, as well as broader government welfare programs. Most members of the Democratic Party, known as the left, want to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. Because of support from American labor unions, Democrats typically take a more protectionist stance on international trade. Democratic support also comes from educators, minority groups and Hollywood.
Although recent campaign finance laws to diminish the influence of wealthy individuals and groups in politics have been enacted, cash-hungry candidates must often promise donors to support certain policies if elected.
But first, each party must decide via a primary process which presidential nominee they’d like to enter the fray. This year the process began in Iowa January 3 and will conclude in late August and early September with the Democratic and Republican national conventions. In these early rounds, each state holds its own primary election or caucus, and candidates—those who have fulfilled the varying state primary signature and filing fee requirements —compete for the most delegates from that state. In most primaries, registered members of each party go to the polls to vote for a presidential nominee from their party. In a caucus, party members meet at a specific time and place, and after public discussion, they choose electors to represent their caucus’s preferred nominee. This February 5, more than 20 states held their primary or caucus. Following that “Super Tuesday,” Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama remained in a close race for the Democratic nomination. Clinton took California and New York. But after several states’ February 12 primaries, Obama emerged leading by 100 delegates—a small but significant advantage. Texas’s primary is March 4. John McCain is the leading Republican candidate, but Mike Huckabee seems determined to stick it out.
The primary process culminates in the Republican and Democratic national conventions in late summer where representatives or “delegates” from each state bring together the results of their state’s primary in order to ultimately decide which candidate should be the official representative of the party in the presidential election. For the Democrats, all delegations are proportional to their states’ vote; for the Republicans, some states use proportional systems while others use winner-takes-all approach to delegates. (See Info Graph) In recent years, the two parties have entered their conventions with a clear front-runner, and these delegate counts have become irrelevant. This year, however, with competition in both parties so tight, the number of delegates won by candidates in the primaries may be critical to choosing the final Republican and Democratic nominee.
Although the details vary by state, any U.S. citizen over 18 years of age who has registered to vote may participate in the general election.
This year election day falls on November 4. Most voters go to a polling place—usually a public building such as a school or a city hall—to cast their ballots. In most cases, people vote by computerized machine in individual voting booths. Those American citizens living abroad may vote via a mail-in absentee ballot. Voting is private, voluntary, and free. It is a crime to try to stop another person from voting.
Although American democracy prides itself on the notion of “one man, one vote,” the presidency is not actually decided by popular vote. The framers of the U.S. Constitution feared giving the power to elect the president directly to the people and instead believed better informed smaller bodies could make wiser choices for the nation, so the individual states and their delegates in the Electoral College system play the critical role. Under this system, there are 538 presidential electors (representing the total number of congresspeople who proportionally represent their states–535 in total–plus three Washington D.C. electoral college representatives). Theoretically the winner of each state’s popular vote wins all the votes of the electors from that state. In this winner-takes-all battle, a candidate who wins the greater percentage of a state, no matter by what margin, also receives all the electoral college votes of that state. Consequently, a candidate can win the popular vote but lose the presidency, as happened to Al Gore in 2000 who won the popular vote by nearly 544,000 votes but lost the electoral college vote by a margin of 271 to 266. Opponents of the Electoral College system criticize this inconsistency as well as the enormous influence given to states like California, New York and Texas that have the most Electoral College delegates based on their high populations.
In mid December of the election year, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate who on January 6 opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The president of the Senate declares the winner, and the new president is sworn into office at noon on January 20 by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
March blows in the results of some big states, including Texas and Ohio, but it doesn’t seem the results will cow any of the remaining candidates into conceding before the conventions, which ensures continued excitement in what might be the world’s most important election of recent history.
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Amy Sennett is a research associate with the U.S. China Business Council in Shanghai and will begin Harvard Law School in the fall.
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