mrs h wrote:
@FNYANKEZ - Could you give me a rough guide as to how the American voting system actually works? (or at least how it’s supposed to work) I get confused about the different states and I don’t understand whether the ordinary people are voting for the party or for a candidate?
Gladly Mrs H!
For the President and Vice President.
The way it works is actually an electoral college. Each vote isn’t directly for the candidate. It’s really for how your state goes. Each state has an electoral delegate value based on population. In the end all of the electoral college votes are counted up to determine the winner. That’s how you theoretically could end up with someone loses the popular vote but wins the electoral college, winning the presidency. This is one of the issues with the 2000 election and the Democrats wanted to abolish it, yet in 2004 the roles were reversed and it came down to Ohio which was super close. If Ohio went for Kerry, he would have won…even though he lost the popular vote by 5 million votes. So they tried trumping up irregularities to get votes added (or thrown out) so he would win the state and thus the electoral college and the presidency…of course they would have been fine with it then.
The system allegedly was established in the constitution that way to ensure that smaller states still end up with a say in the process. That way California, New York, and Texas don’t have complete say in who’s elected.
Back in the day, each state counted their own votes and determined the electoral college winner. The state would then representatives went to a convention to cast the votes on behalf of their state. That was where the winner was officially named. (I think it still happens, but it’s a formality now).
In the past I could see where this was needed due to the physical complications of counting and collecting votes in such a large country. But in the computer age, it’s kinda antiquated.
As for the actual physical balloting process, it is set up and managed state by state.
In Virginia we have pretty straight forward voting machines, and have yet to have any issues.
Why there isn’t a standardized voting mechanism…I have no clue, and that’s how you end up with the hanging chads and dummies unable to fill out a ballot correctly in Florida which caused so much grief in the 2000 election. (The people who set that up were Democrats by the way..but of course the Democratic party pissed and moaned about the republicans when it didn’t go their way).
I’m not a flag carring republican by the way, but the Democratic Party as an institution and many of their most visible talking heads drive me nuts.
If you asked me about the republican led congress between 2000 and 2006, I’d have plenty of negative things to say.
enough ranting back to your questions.
For congress (and this also answers your question about do we vote for the candidate or the party)
You vote for the candidate you want for Senate and House of Representatives that represents your area. For national elections you can have up to three offices to vote for (President, House of Representatives and Senate), but it depends on where you live and on what cycle your particular Senator or Representative was elected in. (President is up every 4 years, Representatives 2 years, Senators 6 years). We have off year elections where only congressmen are up for election, and not always in every district.
For all votes you select the candidate you want. Many people vote the party line (all the candidates on the ballot who belong to the same party), but that is their choice.
I have in the past split my votes between the candidates of both parties (Dem for President, Repub for House of Representatives and Senate) or some combination thereof, with the occasional third party independent to make things interesting.
I believe once upon a time you could split the presidential and VP ticket. But now (and as far as I know since the 20th century) they’ve gone together.
Hope this helps.
