How does the US Presidential system work?

Factual Questions
1

From an Australian point of view, there are three things that I do not understand.

Firstly, why do 2 politicians from THE SAME political party (Bush, McCain) publicly criticise each other? I mean, they are from the SAME PARTY!! Aren’t political parties supposed to speak with one voice?

Secondly, what is a running mate? What is their role, and I hear you can also vote for them rather then Bush or Gore. Is that true?

Thirdly, when you go to the polls, do you actually vote for Gore or Bush or do you vote for your local representative member, who is from the same party as the person you want to be president?

2

Ok, during the first part of the election process, politicians announce their intention to run for the official candidate spot. The primary elections, in March of the election year, allow people to vote-in either the Republican or Democtatic Primary, for the candidate they think is best. BUT the winner of the primary is not necessarily the official candidate. They become the parties official candidate at the Democratic/Republican National Convention, in August. At that, the delegates from each state promise X number of electoral votes for the candidates come the November election.(Electoral votes come in the answer to your third question)

Until they are the official candidate of the party, the candidates are running against others fromt their party. Among party members, there are any number of different positions, like among the rest of society.

A running mare is the candidate’s selection for Vice President. If that candidate wins, then dies in office, the VP will become president. They run as a team-Gore/Lieberman and Bush/Cheney. Generally, people cast their votes based on the presidential candidates, but the VP selection can sway voters to one side or the other. When you vote, you are not actually voting for any of the candidates(just to confuse you further-theis goes to the next question too).

On election day, the American voters actually vote for the members of the Electoral College. These are delegates from each party who will meet and actually vote for the president/vice. pres. ticket in December(???). So the pair that wins the popular vote does not have to be the pair that is actually elected president. These delegates are members of the same party as the candidate for whom they are the electors(is that the right word???)but they have no obligation to actually vote for the candidate, though they have said that they will.

I hope this didn’t confuse you too much, and I believe that I have said everything accurately-I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong or if I’ve misstated something. What it boils down(in my belief) to is that Americans don’t directly elect their leaders, or even the candidates. We vote for people to vote for us.

I apologize for any errors/ommissions or misspellings in this post. It’s early, and I’m still drinking coffee.

3

Thanks Lsura.

That has certainly made things a little bit clearer for me.

4

The main thing to remember about the American political system is that it is not a parlimentary system. That is to say the chief executive (President and state Governors) are elected separately from the legislatures (Congress and state legislatures). As a result, party discipline is much less important in the U.S.

Because of this the President (or a Governor) is frequently of a different political party than one or both houses of Congress (or the state Legislature). In order to pass legislation, it must be acceptable to at least a majority of the legislators of both houses as well as the President (or Governor). On most legislation, there are at least a few legislators that vote the opposite way from the bulk of their party.

One thing that we don’t have here that you do have in most parlimentary systems is a “no confidence” vote with the resultant early elections. Executives and legislators are elected for fixed terms, and early elections cannot be called. Because of this, politicians know when the elections will be held and can begin campaigning for particular offices long before the elections (years before in some cases). Because there will frequently be multiple candidates from each party interested in running, there can be a party primary election. In that election, the voters (usually only those registered to the relevant party) will vote for the candidate they prefer to be their party’s nominee.

For most offices (Congress, Governors, state legislatures), the winners of the primaries challenge each other in the general election (held the first Tuesday in October), and the candidate with the largest number of votes wins.

For President, it is a little different. The Presidential candidates for the main political parties are selected at a convention held in the summer, with delegates from each state voting for their candidates. Although most delegates are “pledged” to a candidate (usually the candidate that won their primary, though there some complexities that I won’t get into here), if the pledged candidate does not get a majority of delegates on the first ballot, they can change their votes on subsequent ballots. In recent years, there has not been a party convention in which the winning candidate was not known well before the convention because he had the overwhelming majority of delegates.

Once the Presidential candidate is selected, he gets to select his candidate for Vice President, known as his running mate. In November, you will vote for a President/Vice President ticket, and cannot separately vote for the individuals. (Actually, you are voting for electors pledged to the President/VP ticket, as mentioned in Lsura’s post). Whichever set of candidates has a majority of votes in each states gets all of the electors in that state.

After the election, the electors for each state meet, and the electoral vote is transmitted to Congress. (Note that the “electoral college”, never meets as a body, and exists only for the purpose of voting for President once every four years.)

If a set of candidates gets a majority of electoral votes, they become President and Vice President. If no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives gets to select the President from among the top three electoral vote-getters.

Or, to summarize a confusing process, in November we will be voting separately for the President/Vice President ticket (or actually electors pledged for the ticket), our local Congressperson (with Congress member being elected to a two year term), and in two-thirds of the states, for one Senator (with each Senator being elected for a six year term, with one-third of the Senators up every two years).

5

Just an addition to a good synopsis. We DO also vote for represenatives at the same time. The difference between us and a parliamentarian system is that the office of president is chosen separately from the legislature. This means that you can, and often do, have the situation that either the house or the senate have a majority from one party at the same time as the other party controls the White House.

As a vote here, during a presidential year, I will be voting for a congressional represenative (2 year terms), and may or may not have a senator to vote for (6 year terms, the two senators from each state are usually staggered so as not to be up for election at the same time).

For the benefit of our friends in other countries who have been seeing all the stuff aired about the electoral college, the mechanism is not obvious on the ballot, and just so you are clear, applies only to the presidential election. We get a ballot that looks like you’re voting for Bush, Gore, etc. It’s really in the fine print that you are actually voting for a board of electors. What it means in practice is that the winner of the popular vote in each state takes the entire state’s block of electoral votes, hence the controversy.

6

Oh, Billdo beat me to it. Well, hopefully we’ve covered the basics for the non-US readers before we get into our usual quasi-theological wrangling about what happens in various odd circumstances, and what to do about the electoral college.

7

The electors from each state have to vote for the ticket that won their state. Except for two, Maine and Montana, I believe.

http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/faq.html

That’s the FAQ for the electorial college.

8

Saint Zero - Your own link says that it’s Nebraska and Maine which allow for proportional distribution of their electoral votes. Neither has very many (5 and 4), so it really doesn’t influence the way the process currently works.

Again, for the benefit of non-US readers, if we haven’t mentioned it at this point, the number of electoral votes possessed by a state is equal to the number of senators and represenatives from that state. Each state has 2 senators, while represenatives are proportional to the state’s population. Hence the preoccupation with who’s going to carry the larger states in these contests.

9

When the American Constitution was first enacted in 1789, it was set up so that the candidate who received the most electoral votes became President and the one who got the next highest amount became Vice President. This is generally regarded as one of the biggest goofs the writers of the Constitution made; it almost guarantees a President and Vice President will be rivals.

The system was tinkered with so that electors could vote for two candidates. The intent was that all of the electors of the winning party would vote for their Presidential candidate and one or two of them would throw away their second vote so the Vice Presidential candidate would run a close second. This system was obviously jury rigged and far too prone to error.

In 1804, the Constitution was amended to provide for seperate Presidential and Vice Presidential races. Candidates now run for the specific offices so the Vice Presidential candidate cannot receive votes for the office of President. (Except that some states allow write in candidates which means voters can vote for anyone whose name they can spell.)

10

MadHatter,

It’s similar to the selection of a party leader in the parliamentary system. For example, here in Canada, last spring the Alliance Party had a leadership race to select the new leader. There were three candidates, and although they all belonged to the same party, they did criticize each other, to make the case that their positions were better and more likely to lead to success in the general election.

As Billdo noted, because the election date is not fixed in most parliamentary systems, the choice of a leader for a party in a parliamentary system is not usually tied to the cycle of the general election. By the time of the general election, which can be some years after the choice of the party leader, it’s hoped that the party will have got over the internal stress caused by the fraticidal campaigning.

Since the date is fixed in the Congressional system, the timing of the selection of the party’s presidential candidate is linked to the date of the general election, and thus you have the strong intra-party criticism in the spring, and a quickie “kiss and make up” between the successful candidate and his defeated rivals (usually at the convention in the summer), and then a supposedly united party campaigning in the fall.

11

If a Douglas Adams fan with the book handy could help out later, I’ll start:

The very people in government service are the people that are absolutely the last people that should ever be in government service.
To summarize: people that want to be in charge of other people are in fact the people least suited for the job. To summarize the summary: No person that actually wants to be president should ever be allowed to. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

12

a quick add, generally, once the primaries have been completed, the opposing candidates within each party officially “endorse” the winner, thus demonstrating their loyalty to the party over individual gain blah blah blah. If the losing candidate is feeling cranky, he can choose to withhold his endorsement for a time (or forever) to demonstrate his displeasure with the winner. I believe that McCain was slow in endorsing Bush, but finally caved.

13

> The electors from each state have to vote for the ticket that won their state.

No they don’t, but they almost always do.

14

The discussion of the political system has been an exceptionally concise, accurate and interesting one. I would like to add two related points.

Party affiliation means little in the United States and politicians frequently do something that would seem anathema in a parliamentary system, namely changing parties. The reason for this is that congressional districts are redrawn every 10 years based upon the most recent census. A politician is accountable only to the voters in the specific district he or she serves. If the Representative (or Senator, for that matter) notices that the political pulse of the district he or she represents has changed, the politician is free to change parties. In a parliamentary system, a turncoat might be eminently suspect by members of the party they have just joined, but that is not always the case in the US. Frequently, such turncoats are accorded considerable influence by members of their new party. I am incapable of telling you why, though.

The second point is related and revolves around “pork” or government spending. Because politicians first loyalty must be to their geographically-defined, voting constituents, sometimes it is more important that they make political deals with members of the opposing party and vote for issues that they may personally and politically oppose. This quid pro quo approach to politics in which a democrat may support a spending bill that has funding for a highway in a republican’s district, while the republican supports a defense bill that sends funds to a shipyard the democrat’s district, is the status quo in Washington. Getting reelected frequently depends upon the government funds that a politician can direct to their district far more than it does on party loyalty. In fact, party loyalty anymore, seems to be a veneer that most politicians cover themselves in in order to gain blocks of votes that the two parties have worked to try to capture for decades.