A Short & Happy Guide to Civics by Deborah Cupples

Author:Deborah Cupples
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647082154
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

States hold the General Election (November).

Electoral College votes to elect the president (and vice president).

Congress counts the Electoral College votes.

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General Election

Election Day and Before

Election Day for presidential candidates and their running mates (vice-presidential candidates) happens every 4 years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That date is set by statute (3 U.S. Code § 1).

Election Day happens after the major political parties (and some smaller parties) choose their presidential candidates. Each political party has its own rules for choosing its candidate for president. The major parties hold national conventions after state- and territory-level primaries or caucuses.

Primaries are pretty straightforward. They are public elections, conducted by local governments within a state. Most states have primaries.

Caucuses are private gatherings conducted by political parties at the state level. Many people complain about caucuses because the candidate for president is chosen by a relatively small group of party-insiders, instead of the voting public.

Both primaries and caucuses give state-level parties some say over which candidate the national-level party will choose to run in the general election.

A party’s national convention is where the national-level political party decides which candidate will be the presidential nominee for that party: i.e., which candidate will run in the general election. Each party’s delegates from the states go to the party’s national convention.

Usually, the nominee is the one who wins a majority of the votes in the state primaries and caucuses, but not necessarily. It depends on a political party’s rules about choosing a candidate.

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