How does the US voting system work?
By sephrenia
@sephrenia (567)
September 3, 2007 8:19am CST
Yesterday I came across an article saying that the presidential race in America has started (it was an article on bbc news about someone called Fred Thompson) but to be honest I don't know how the US voting system works ( A great failing in a History and Politics student I suppose).
From the little I have learned as a part of my course, I know that to elect a senator, it's similar to the UK voting system in that the person with the most votes wins.
When it comes to elect a president though, I get confused. I know that people can vote as much as they like but then something called a collegiate comes into play and they vote.
This means as far as i know that even though a candidate may be very popular, he may still lose the overall election to be president.
Can someone explain to me what the collegiate is and why it can override the will of the voters? and how does the collegiate choose the candidate it likes best?
Thanks in advance to everyone who reads this.
2 responses
@xfahctor (14118)
• Lancaster, New Hampshire
3 Sep 07
Ok, the Electorial college, an outdated institution in my mind, was originaly established as a safeguarde. It was felt a few ceturies ago that the common man was not intelligent enough and could possibly elect someone not qualified. So what the electorial college does, is take the number of votes in each states and each state is given a certian number of delegates,depending on the population of that state. Each delegate thenm casts its vote according to the popular vote. While they are not bound by law to vote with the popular vote, they are bound by honor and it has never occured that they haven't done so. This by the way only occures in the presidential race.
1 person likes this
@sephrenia (567)
•
3 Sep 07
Thankyou for helping me out with that :D I couldnt get it straight in my head before. Can I ask, How do they choose the delegates to cast the vote? is it based on merit, qualification or are the delegates chosen by the people?
Again thankyou for helping me with this!
@xfahctor (14118)
• Lancaster, New Hampshire
3 Sep 07
Theoreticaly, it can be over ridden. But it has never happened. You'll hear a great deal about voting fraud here too in the last 2 elections, but the sad truth is, it's bunch of sore losers who couldn't face the fact that people simply voted and the guy won.
1 person likes this
@sephrenia (567)
•
3 Sep 07
I didn't know that it had never been overridden, I assumed (stupid mistake there) that it must have been at some point or another. Isn't the US voting system one of the most stable in the world? how would anyone be able to defraud it anyways?
I think a lot of people who have stood for election, no matter where they are in the world, hate to lose lol it just seems that sometimes the candidates get overheated and can't take it so start yelling about fraud .
@sephrenia (567)
•
3 Sep 07
I should have made myself clearer when I said that, I just meant that loads of people can vote for one person if they wanted but they can still be overruled as far as i knew :)
