Juline Garnier / Photo credits: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images via AFP / Brett Johnsen / NurPhoto via AFP 5:30 a.m., October 26, 2024
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Two neck-and-neck candidates will face off at the polls on November 5. The stakes are colossal since it will be a question of choosing the future president of the United States, in an extremely tense international context. The 244 million voters are asked to choose between <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/donald-trump-whats-behind-the-us-presidents-baltimore-attack/" title="Donald Trump: What's behind the US President's Baltimore attack”>Kamala Harris, the current vice-president alongside Democrat Joe Biden, and Donald Trump, the former Republican president.
An indirect system
Indeed, the designation of the American president is done by an indirect ballot. Voters do not designate a person, but the “political color”, or the party that the electors of their state will represent. These electors number 538, a figure which corresponds to the number of parliamentarians in the federal state: 100 senators and 435 for the House of Representatives. Added to this are three major electors for the District of Columbia, including Washington, the capital, which is not a state, but is still represented.
It is these 538 electors who form the electoral college, responsible for officially designating the next tenant of the White House for four years. A “second presidential election” therefore takes place on December 17. They are appointed by the parties they represent. The country’s Constitution does not provide any “guide” for their appointment, except that “no senator or representative (…) may be appointed as an elector”. Most of the time, these are party members, lobbyists, local officials or retired political figures, like Bill Clinton in 2016, as the newspaper recalls. The World.
The “Winner takes all” rule
If the two parties are represented by the elector candidates in each state, the election of the electors is a majority vote of closed lists. In other words, the one who comes first in the ballot wins all the major electors in the state. Thus, with 50% of the votes plus one vote, the leading candidate sends all the major voters supported by his cause to the electoral college. This is the “winner takes all” rule. The latter will therefore commit to voting for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris on December 17.
Two exceptions, however, exist in the United States: in Maine and Nebraska, the system includes a proportional dose. A major elector is chosen in each so-called “congressional” district based on the result of the popular vote, then two major electors are elected at the state level based on the overall result, recalls daily life West France.
To avoid an unfair vote – which would not correspond to a majority – 33 states as well as the District of Columbia have laws requiring electors to follow the popular vote by imposing either a fine or a substitute elector. Although they are rare, betrayals can nevertheless exist. Overall, this voting method explains the disparities between the number of popular votes and the gap between the electors obtained.
A distribution linked to the population of the States
The 538 electors are distributed according to the number of inhabitants per state. In fact, California, which has the most inhabitants, also has the largest number of electors: 54. The least populated states, such as Wyoming, Vermont or Alaska, have a minimum of three electors, which places them in slight overrepresentation, compared to other states.
In certain states, which have seen their number of inhabitants change, the distribution of electors has changed somewhat. Texas has, for example, two more electors. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon gained one more vote. Where California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia lost one big voter each.
These changes are important because they can tip the scales to the Democratic or Republican side, depending on the political label of these voters, particularly in the “Swing states”, these states where nothing is decided in advance. The election of the electors will therefore be decisive, especially since for some specialists, the American presidential election will be one of the “closest” in at least 25 years.
