United States Presidential Elections & Politics

[Tsude 16 / 1,252]

Hello everybody

 

For the ones not knowing how the elections work in the USA, this is a SIMPLIFIED version. This was made using various audio-visual sources, written sources and my own knowledge of the American history and politics. I will be using the example of this election to explain this, so I will not consider that Trump is already president.

a.     Introduction
b.     Structure of the USA Congress + explanation of US president
c.     House of representatives  <-> House of commons
d.     The Senate <-> House of the Lords
e.     Electoral College + Presidential elections
f.      Summarisation
g.     More than 2 presidential candidates???


a.     Introduction :

Election year, a very important year for the citizens and politicians of the US. They will get to decide who will become the next leader of the US. Now, this year it’s Hillary vs Trump or in other words, Corrupt vs Dumb. To explain how the elections work I can’t really just talk about the elections itself, I have to start with the US Congress.

b.   Structure of the US Congress :
The US congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States consisting of two houses. – The US government has 3 branches. The executive branch, the judicial branch and the Legisative branch. To become a president you need to  go from the legislative branch to the Executive branch -  Now I’m pretty sure you already don’t understand 50% of the sentence. To explain what that means I have to explain 2 words. Bicameral and Legislature. Bicameral means in two chambers or houses whilst Legislature is an assembly with the authority to make and pass on laws. The US congress exists out of two houses. The House of representatives(US) wich is relatable to the house of commons(UK) and The Senate (US) wich is also relatable to the House of the lords (UK). To understand the way presidential candidates are picked I’ll be explaining the elections of the House of the representatives and the senate.

c.     The House of Representatives :
The house of representatives like the house of commons was created to give the people of  every local voting region of America a voice. The elections or re-elections happen every 2 years. How do members get a seat in the house of representatives though? Well, every state has a district and those districts are determined by the population and the population density. So that means if the state has a high population it’ll have a high amount of districts and the same thing applies if it has a low population. So it’s also quite logical that every district votes for 1 representative. To give an example : the state of Georgia has 14 districts thus, 14 elected representatives. Which means the state of Georgia has 14 seats from the 435 seats in “The house of Representatives”. The house has 6 non-voting seats because they belong to a US territory and not a state, but to keep it simple I won’t go into detail about US territories.

d.    The Senate :
Now you know a bit more about the first house of the congress. Now I’ll explain the second house, The senate which looks a lot like the house of Lords. Each state has 2 senators In the Senate that represents that state. Those senators are chosen from a popular vote, which is basically a sate wide vote. So that means there are 100 senators in the Senate if you count them all up (50 states with 2 senators each). Now the elections within the Senate are a bit different than the one in the House of Representatives. The elections are called “a six year term staggered election”. What this means is that instead of having to vote for 100 senators every 6 six years they vote for 1/3 of the seats or senators every 2 years to ensure that one party doesn’t “take over” the Senate. For the ones that don’t know, the US has 2 parties. The democrats and the Republicans. To explain them both shortly the democrats are progressive whilst the Republicans are c conservative. The senators also have to qualify for a couple of things : 1) they must be 30+ 2) they must be a US citizen for over 9 years and 3) they must be inhabitants of the states they represent.

e.     The electoral College and the Presidential Elections :
Now that you know about the two houses of the US congress I can finally explain how the US presidential elections work. The most logical thing would be to count up all the votes and the one with the most votes would be president, right? Well… In good ol’ ‘murica that ain’t the case.  
The way this works in the US is that every state votes for a certain presidential candidate and for a state to be able to vote for a specific presidential candidate it needs to have over 50% of the votes for that state to be able to vote for that candidate. Though this system is flawed. For example : California has 34 million people and Georgia 9.9 million people. For Georgia with 9.9 mln citizens to have the same amount of influence in the elections as California with 34 mln citizens is unfair. That’s where the electoral representatives come in play. The amount of electoral representatives per state are decided by the amount of districts they have + the 2 senators representing that state. To go on with my example the state of California would have 55 electoral representatives whilst the state of Georgia would only have a meagre 16. That is why presidential candidates focus on states with a bigger population than the ones with a smaller one. Though in America there is this thing where the winner gets it all. For example let’s say Trump and Clinton are competing over California. Trump gets 33 electoral votes and Clinton 22. This means that Trump won that state and will also get all the votes Clinton has gotten from that state. Now instead of 33 votes he has 55 votes. Do you see what’s going on here? By winning bigger states by just 1 electoral vote can give you your opponent’s votes as well.  In total there are 538 electoral representatives from the electoral college.
Now you know this, we can carry on. To know how a president gets chosen you don’t just look atthe election day but to the whole election year. To start of with you have “The primaries” which spans from January to June to decide which candidate from each party will represent that party, like we’ve been seeing now. Clinton will be representing the democrats and Trump the Republicans. This has been made clear at the RNC (Republic National Convention) and DNC (Democratic National Convention) Now that the primaries are over the election campaigns begin. Each candidate will have a running mate or a vice-president with him which has a different set of skills to aid him in his/her campaign. After a long time campaigning election day has arrived. The people vote for electors or electoral representatives who then vote for the presidential candidates. If a candidate has over 270 votes, he wins the elections and then becomes the next president of the USA.

f.      More than 2 presidential candidates???
There are 5 presidential candidates! Indeed. In the US the two leading parties are the Democrats and Republicans, then you have the independent parties. The reason you don’t hear more about these great parties that have better policies than the Democrats and Republicans is because they don’t own media chains and don’t have a lot of money.

The competing candidates and their running mates:
-Democrats:
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (New York)               -  Presidential Nominee
US Senator Tim Kaine (Virginia)                                                            - Vice Presidential Nominee

-Republicans:
Businessman Donald J. Trump (New York)                                       - Presidential Nominee
Governor Mike Pence (Indiana)                                                            - Vice Presidential Nominee

- Constitution Party of the US: 
Darrell Castle (Tennessee)                                                             - Presidential Nominee
Scott Bradley (Utah)                                                                        - Vice Presidential Nominee

-Green Party:
Dr. Jill Stein (Massachusetts)                                                       - Presidential Nominee
Ajamu Baraka (Virginia)                                                                - Vice Presidential Nominee

-Liberterian Party:
Former Governor Gary Johnson (New Mexico)                         - Presidential Nominee
Former Governor Bill Weld (Massachusetts)                            - Vice Presidential Nominee

And more presidential nominees but I can’t bother with the smeg people: http://www.politics1.com/p2016.htm
        

 
g.     Summarisation
 
1)     US congress = 2 houses, 535 representatives combined.
2)     House of representatives : 435 members
3)     The senate : 100 Members
4)     Electoral college : to make sure the influences of states are equitable (wich means that it’s fair)
5)     Primaries are held to decide the Party’s candidates
6)     Candidates pick their running mate and go campaigning
7)     Election day comes, candidate with over 270 electoral votes becomes president.


Sources :
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRu_JcarCDY : basic – house – senate – electoral – president
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nts3a6pp6jU : tie between presidents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-4Sfn_ti-U : Very thorough explanation of us elections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt5K4ZK0ILY : handy stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I : Electoral system explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdyCz6QpbOk : extra info
http://www.politics1.com/p2016.htm : The presidential candidates