Time to Vote
On Tuesday, Nov. 3, American voters will choose a president and vice president of the United States. The general election is always on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Candidates for president and vice president from one political party run as a team. We call the team a ticket.
The tickets this year are:
Electing a president
The rules for electing a new president are laid out in the U.S. Constitution. Each state gets a certain number of votes, called electoral votes.
The number of electoral votes that each state gets is based on how many senators and representatives the state has in the U.S. Congress. How many does your state have?
The Electoral College
Voting is an extremely important duty that adults perform as citizens of the United States. But we don’t directly elect our presidents.
Instead, the U.S. uses the Electoral College method. The Electoral College isn’t a university where people go to study. Another
meaning of college is a group that meets and has special duties.
The Electoral College has the duty of choosing the president of the U.S. Its vote is based on how the people in each state voted.
Electors
The political parties for each state choose a set of electors. The number of electors is equal to the state’s number of members of Congress. For example:
2 senators
South + 7 representatives
Carolina has 8 electors for each party
Eight Republican electors from South Carolina would be expected to vote for the Republican ticket. The eight Democratic electors would be expected to vote for the Democratic ticket.
Other political parties and independent candidates choose a set of electors, too.
The popular vote
American citizens who are 18 years old or older are eligible to vote. In most states, the winning ticket in each state gets all of that state’s electoral votes.
Sometimes the candidate who gets the most popular votes does not get the most electoral votes. This happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received 65,845,063 votes, but only 227 electoral votes. President Donald Trump received 62,980,160 popular votes, but he won 304 electoral votes.