Arab America Picks A President: How America 'Really' Picks A President
BY: Fred Shwaery/Contributing Writer
The primaries and the conventions have come and gone and election day is just weeks away. We’ll head to the polls where are choices are Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
But wait, there’s more!
In addition to these two frontrunners, Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson are on the ballot in all states. There are dozens more candidates for president on various state ballots. For example, Constitution Party nominee Darrell Castle will be on the Michigan ballot and voters in 23 states will see independent Rocky De La Fuente on their ballots.
Realistically, these candidates won’t win but they can make a difference in states with close races. It’s likely that these candidates will pull some votes from the frontrunners and they might be enough to change the outcome of a Clinton-Trump race. For example, many Bernie Sanders supporters will vote for Stein as she is much in line with many Sanders’ positions. In a state with a close election, she might pull enough votes from Clinton to give the state’s electors to Trump.
We’ll be up late on November 8th watching the results come in and we’ll have completed the election of the 45th President of the United States of America.
Not so fast…
All that November election does is select electors to the Electoral College. These electors then meet to vote for the president and vice president. Here’s how it goes:
There are 538 electors and the next president needs a majority of them (270) to win. There is one elector for each of the 435 congressional districts, one for each of the 100 senators and 3 for the District of Columbia. Candidates earn electors by receiving the most votes on election day. It’s winner take all in every state except Maine and Nebraska where the electors are selected by congressional district. This is why national polling meals little. We know the likely winners in all but about 12 battleground states where the elections are too close to call.
On December 19, the electors will meet in their state capitols to cast their votes for president and for vice president. At that point, we should have a winner. If it’s very close, the losing candidate can actually work to persuade a few electors to change their votes. Not likely but a few electors have changed their votes in the past.
What if nobody gets a majority? Then, it gets more complicated. On January 6, the incoming Senate picks the next vice president and the incoming House of Representatives picks the next president. Each senator gets one vote. The house of representatives casts one vote per state so members of congress first vote by state and then cast their one vote for president. The Republicans have a clear majority in the House of Representatives and a lead in the Senate so Trump and Mike Pence will win if the congress makes the decision..
Make Your Predictions
Want to see how the election might go? Follow along with this interactive Electoral College map from the National Archives. As polls show the likely outcomes by state, click the map and move the electors from candidate to candidate. Then, make your predictions on the battleground states and see how the election might turn out.