The Presidential Election PDF

Name: _____________________________ Date: ______________ The Presidential Election The presidential election takes place in the United States every four years on Election Day. Election Day is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of November. The Electoral College is t...

Name: _____________________________ Date: ______________ The Presidential Election The presidential election takes place in the United States every four years on Election Day. Election Day is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of November. The Electoral College is the process that elects the president to office, and it was established by the founding fathers in the 1800s. This process uses a system of a combination of both popular votes and elector votes in deciding who will become president and run the country. The Electoral College is a system that was created as a compromise by the founding fathers so that both United States citizens and elected officials have a voice in the presidential election. The electoral process begins with citizens from each state voting on Election Day for the candidate that they would like to see running for the Office of the President of the United States. Once the state has calculated the winner by determining the most popular vote, the electors from that state vote on behalf of its state citizens. Each state has a certain number of electors that vote for the president and vice president. The number of electors vary by state. Each of the fifty states gets an elector for each member of Congress from that state. This means that each member of the House of Representatives of the state gets a vote. The number of House Representatives is based on the population of that state. Each state then gets another two votes from the two senators that each state has. A large state like California has 55 electors that will vote to represent the popular vote of that state, while a smaller state like Connecticut has only 7 electors. Glossary The electors of each state will vote for the person candidate – a person who runs in an election who won the popular vote, even if the candidate elector – a person who is J9Schneider@ThinkGrowGiggle allowed to vote in an election won by only one vote. Very rarely will the Electoral popular vote – the winning vote made by individual voters, not the electoral college The Presidential Election College vote differently. Since it is possible for a candidate to win the presidential election without winning the country’s popular vote, many Americans feel that the Electoral College is outdated and should not be the system in place that decides who becomes the next president of the United States. Winning without the popular vote has happened five times in American History. Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel Tilden (1876), Grover Cleveland (1888), Al Gore (2000), and Hillary Clinton (2016) all won the popular vote but were not voted into office because of the Electoral College process. Others disagree and believe in the electoral process. This is because this process was designed so that states with large populations do not always decide which candidate would be elected. The electoral process gives power to smaller states, regardless of their population. With 538 electoral votes in the country, it takes 270 electoral votes for a candidate to win the presidential election. There are two phases for running for presidential election. The first phase consists of the primary election. This is when each party, the Democrats and Republicans elect a candidate to represent their party in the second phase, called the general election. This second phase takes place in November. It is when the public votes on who will become president between the winners of the primary election. The winning candidate is then sworn into office in January on Inauguration Day. J9Schneider@ThinkGrowGiggle