Voting is the democratic process of government by consensus. At each election many races are held and many pieces of legislation are voted on.
Most people know to vote for President every four years in the US. However, there is a lot more to vote on than that each year. In every state there are federal elections every two years. In some states there are also local off-year elections. Plus there are primaries before the actual elections that decide who gets on the ballot. Plus there are special elections sometimes when there are vacant seats!
There is a high degree of certainty that Russia ordered an influence campaign in 2016 to undermine public faith in the US democratic process and the sway the election.
The Electoral College is meant to protect minority voting interests from the majority and to prevent special interests not in the public interest.
Bernie Sanders can still technically be elected President by electors (who vote December 19th, 2016). This could be done by 270 electors voting for Bernie, or by Trump being deprived a 270 majority and the House electing Bernie.
Votes cast for President and Vice President in the general election are advisory votes, the President and Vice President aren’t decided until the electors’ direct votes are cast and counted.
Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote, but Donald Trump won the 2016 election by electoral vote due to the way the electoral college works.
In the U.S., the President and Vice President are elected by getting a majority of electoral college votes, they are not elected by popular vote.
Voter fraud is real and so is voter suppression. However, widespread voter fraud is very unlikely to occur, and convicted voter fraud in the United States is very uncommon.
Third Parties can win elections, but they rarely do. This is because the United States of America has a two-party system in practice.
Despite two parties dominating politics due to a majority being needed to win elections, the United States doesn’t officially have a two-party system. Parties aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution.
Today we think of Republicans as Red and Democrats as Blue, but that specific color scheme only came into use in the 2000’s. Neither party has an official color.
Shirley Chisholm became the first black Congresswoman in 1968. In 1972 Chisholm ran for President as a Democrat, making her both the first female, or black, major party Presidential candidate.
Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominee of a major U.S. political party at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Victoria Woodhull, an American leader of the woman’s suffrage movement, became the first female candidate for President of the United States in 1872.
It is a myth that your vote doesn’t count. Despite the electoral college electing the President directly, every vote counts. It just counts in complex ways that differ by election, state, and region.
We look at the effect of the black voter and black suffrage on the balance of political power in the two-party system.
The article below is written as advice to potential “faithless electors” thinking about how to vote in 2016, but doubles as a lesson in civics regarding the powers and responsibilities of the U.S. Electoral College.
We explain the different ways America can change the Electoral College system, and discuss the pros and cons of abolishing or reforming the electoral system.
Separation of Powers describes the way in which government is divided into different branches (ex. in the U.S., the legislative, executive, and judicial). Checks and balances describe the powers each branch has to “check” the other branches and ensure a balance of power.
Different types of government can be said to be based on a number of attributes like power source, power structure, and economic system.
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