If no candidate receives 270 votes, the final decision is made by the U.S. House of Representatives. Only two American presidents have been chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives because they lacked enough Electoral College votes.
How are the electors chosen? Generally, the parties either nominate slates of potential electors at their state party conventions or they choose the electors by a vote of the party's central committee. Political parties often choose electors to recognize their service and dedication to that particular party.
In 1971, 18-year-olds gained the right to vote. Special elections were allowed to be conducted by mail ballot. For the first time, any registered voter in Washington could apply, in writing, for status as an ongoing absentee voter. Using this option, ballots for every election are sent to the voter through the mail.
The United States Constitution does not specify a notion of pledging; no federal law or constitutional statute binds an elector's vote to anything. All pledging laws originate at the state level; the U.S. Supreme Court upheld these state laws in its 1952 ruling Ray v. Blair.
The Electoral College is how we refer to the process by which the United States elects the President, even though that term does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. In this process, the States (which includes the District of Columbia just for this process) elect the President and Vice President.
Electors are chosen by the results of the State popular vote on election day. The Framers expected electors to use their own judgment, however most electors today are expected to vote for their party's candidates.
Electoral votes are allocated among the States based on the Census. Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts.
Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives - which may change each decade according to the size of each State's population as determined in the Census.
How were the first electors in the Electoral College chosen? Article II of the Constitution provided for each state to choose electors by a method the state legislature would set up. Each state would have as many electors as it had senators and representatives.
The general concept that is proposed by many is that you must always vote for a Republican or a Democrat because you must stop the worst candidate from winning. In a sense, you are voting a negative vote – against someone – rather than for a candidate of your choice. However, this actually depends on the scenario of the vote. Let’s look at some examples.
A newer method of measuring voting power was created by a research team from Columbia University using a more empirical (based on existing data) and less randomized model. They concluded that the smaller states had more mathematical voting power due to the fact that they received 2 votes minimum as a starting point. This model tends to generate smaller multipliers for voting power but more accurately matches empirical data from past elections.
According to Wikipedia: “Wasted votes are votes cast for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes – a total of 70% wasted votes.”
For U.S. Presidential elections, a state-by-state system is used called the Electoral College. Each state gets a proportional amount of electoral votes which are then used to find a majority for president. Interestingly, what happens in each separate state is a smaller FPTP election, followed by a counting of electoral votes.
The argument for this case is even more pronounced because the election was ultimately decided on the basis of the election results in Florida where Bush prevailed over Gore by a margin of only 537 votes (0.009%), which was far exceeded by the number of votes, 97,488 (0.293%), that Nader received. (Wikipedia)
However, there are many benefits of voting third party, even for president. It makes a political statement to the majority parties. It helps local politicians of that party in elections. It can help change platforms to include third-party elements. And it provides recognition for the party among voters as a viable alternative.
The registered voters in California add up to 17.7 million. Not all of them will vote, but we can use the 2012 presidential election as a predictor, where 13.2 million people voted.
Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost -- in time, effort, lost productivity -- with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your "civic duty." As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, "A rational individual should abstain from voting."
This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare.
"As long as poll-voting was the only option, there was an incentive (or pressure) to go to the polls only to be seen handing in the vote. The motivation could be hope for social esteem, benefits from being perceived as a cooperator or just the avoidance of informal sanctions. Since in small communities, people know each other better and gossip about who fulfills civic duties and who doesn't, the benefits of norm adherence were particularly high in this type of community."
Political parties regularly paid voters $5 or $10 to cast the proper ballot; sometimes payment came in the form of a keg of whiskey, a barrel of flour or, in the case of an 1890 New Hampshire Congressional race, a live pig.
In other words, we do vote out of self-interest -- a conclusion that will satisfy economists -- but not necessarily the same self-interest as indicated by our actual ballot choice. For all the talk of how people "vote their pocketbooks," the Swiss study suggests that we may be driven to vote less by a financial incentive than a social one. It may be that the most valuable payoff of voting is simply being seen at the polling place by your friends or co-workers.
After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment . But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings -- much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
This finding may have serious implications for advocates of Internet voting -- which, it has long been argued, would make voting easier and therefore increase turnout. But the Swiss model indicates that the exact opposite might hold true.
Elections are decided by the people who go out and vote. Take some time and learn about the measures and the candidates. If you don’t vote, someone else will make the decision for you. Your power is in your vote.
Voting is your chance to stand up for the issues you care about like public transportation, raising minimum wage, or funding local schools. This is your life: take the time to help decide what’s best.