The election of the president and vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not directly for those offices, but instead for members of the Electoral College. These electors then cast direct votes, known as electoral votes, for the presidential and vice presidential candidate. The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (at least 270 out of 538, since the Twenty-third Amendment granted voting rights to citizens of D.C.) is then elected to that office. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes for president, the House of Representatives elects the president; likewise if no one receives an absolute majority of the votes for vice president, then the Senate elects the vice president.
United States presidential elections differ from many other republics around the world (operating under either the presidential system or the semi-presidential system) which use direct elections from the national popular vote ('one person, one vote') of their entire countries to elect their respective presidents. The United States instead uses indirect elections for its president through the Electoral College, and the system is highly decentralized like other elections in the United States. The Electoral College and its procedure are established in the U.S. Constitution by Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 4; and the Twelfth Amendment (which replaced Clause3 after its ratification in 1804). Under Clause2, each state casts as many electoral votes as the total number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress, while (per the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961) Washington, D.C., casts the same number of electoral votes as the least-represented state, which is three. Also under Clause2, the manner for choosing electors is determined by each state legislature, not directly by the federal government. Many state legislatures previously selected their electors directly, but over time all switched to using votes cast by state voters to choose the state's members of the electoral college (electors). Beyond the parameters set in the U.S. Constitution, state law, not federal, regulates most aspects of administering the popular vote, including most of the voter eligibility and registration requirements.
Almost all states require that the winner of the plurality of its constituent statewide popular vote ('one person, one vote') shall receive all of that state's electors ("winner-takes-all'). A couple - Nebraska and Maine - determine a part of their electors by use of district votes within the respective state. Eighteen states also have specific laws that punish electors who vote in opposition to the plurality, known as "faithless" or "unpledged" electors. In modern times, faithless and unpledged electors have not affected the ultimate outcome of an election, so the results can generally be determined based on the state-by-state popular vote.
In addition, most of the time, the winner as determined by the electoral college also has received the largest part of the national popular vote. There have been four exceptions: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016, in which the Electoral College winner's portion of the popular vote was surpassed by an opponent. Although taking fewer votes, the winner claimed more electoral college seats, due to winning close and narrow pluralities in numerous swing states. In addition, the 1824 election was the only presidential election under the current system decided by a contingent election in Congress that elected a different president than the candidate with a plurality in both the electoral and popular vote. (The 1800 election and the 1824 election were decided in the House. In 1800, the House winner was the candidate who had won a plurality of the popular vote.)
Presidential elections occur every four years on Election Day, which since 1845 has been the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. and This date coincides with the general elections of various other federal, state, and local races; since local governments are responsible for managing elections, these races typically all appear on one ballot. The Electoral College electors then formally cast their electoral votes on the first Monday after December 12 at their state's capital. Congress then certifies the results in early January, and the presidential term begins on Inauguration Day, which since the passage of the Twentieth Amendment has been set at January 20.
The nomination process, consisting of the primary elections and caucuses and the nominating conventions, was not specified in the Constitution, but was developed over time by the states and political parties. These primary elections are generally held between January and June before the general election in November, while the nominating conventions are held in the summer. Though not codified by law, political parties also follow an indirect election process, where voters in the fifty states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, cast ballots for a slate of delegates to a political party's nominating convention, who then elect their party's presidential nominee. Each party may then choose a vice presidential running mate to join the ticket, which is either determined by choice of the nominee or by a second round of voting. Because of changes to national campaign finance laws since the 1970s regarding the disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns, presidential candidates from the major political parties usually declare their intentions to run as early as the spring of the previous calendar year before the election (almost 21 months before Inauguration Day).
History Electoral College Article Two of the Constitution originally established the method of presidential elections, including the creation of the Electoral College. This was the result of a compromise between those constitutional framers who wanted Congress to choose the president and those who preferred a national popular vote.
As set forth in Article Two, each state is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its delegates in both houses of Congress, combined. In 1961, the ratification of the Twenty-Third Amendment granted a number of electors to the District of Columbia, an amount equal to the number of electors allocated to the least populous state. However, U.S. territories are not allocated electors, and therefore are not represented in the Electoral College.
State legislatures - direct election Constitutionally, the legislature of each state determines how its electors are chosen; ArticleII, Section1, Clause2 states that each state shall appoint electors "in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct".Richard A. Epstein, In Such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct": The Outcome in Bush v Gore Defended, 68 University of Chicago Law Review 613, 614 (2001). During the first presidential election in 1789, in four of the 11 states of the time, the electors were elected directly by voters. In two others, a hybrid system was used where both the voters and the state legislatures took part in electing the electors. In five, the state legislatures themselves elected the electors.
Gradually more states began conducting popular elections to choose their slate of electors. In 1800, five of the 16 states chose electors by a popular vote; by 1824, after the rise of Jacksonian democracy, 18 of the 24 states chose electors by popular vote.Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Vol. I (11th ed. 2019), p. 340. (In most cases simple state-wide plurality is sufficient to elect a general ticket using popular vote. But in the first presidential election in 1789, for example, some states used "open" list block voting; Maryland used block voting but had guaranteed seats for different parts of the state; Virginia elected its 12 electors by first-past-the-post voting contest in 12 districts. Other states later used multi-member districts, each covering a part of the state, to elect their electors.)
This movement toward greater democratization coincided with a gradual decrease in property restrictions for the franchise. By 1840, only one of the 26 states (South Carolina) still selected electors by the state legislature.Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton & Sherman C. Puckett, Presidential Elections, 1789–2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data (University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 117. Every other state was electing its electors by general ticket plurality voting state-wide. By 1872 no states elected their electors using the state legislature. In 1876, Colorado chose its electors via the state legislature for the first and only time - after that, all states chose their electors via general election. And today only two states - Maine and Nebraska - elect at least some of their electors through a different method than that general ticket method, in their cases it is First-past-the-post voting in districts covering part of the state.
Vice presidents Under the original system established by Article 2, electors cast votes for two candidates for president. The candidate with the highest number of votes (provided it was a majority of the electoral votes) became the president, and the second-place candidate became the vice president. This presented a problem during the presidential election of 1800 when Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Thomas Jefferson and challenged Jefferson's election to the office. In the end, Jefferson was chosen as the president because of Alexander Hamilton's influence in the House.
In response to the 1800 election, the 12th Amendment was passed, requiring electors to cast two distinct votes: one for president and another for vice president. While this solved the problem at hand, it reduced the prestige of the vice presidency, as the office was no longer held by the leading challenger for the presidency. The separate ballots for president and vice president became something of a moot issue later in the 19th century when it became the norm for popular elections to determine a state's Electoral College delegation. Electors chosen this way are pledged to vote for a particular presidential and vice presidential candidate (offered by the same political party). Although the president and vice president are legally elected separately, in practice they are chosen together.
Tie votes The Twelfth Amendment also established rules when no candidate wins a majority vote in the Electoral College. In the presidential election of 1824, Andrew Jackson received a plurality, but not a majority, of electoral votes cast. The election was thrown to the House, and John Quincy Adams was elected president. A deep rivalry resulted between Andrew Jackson and House Speaker Henry Clay, who had also been a candidate in the election.
Since the vice presidential candidate John Calhoun received a majority of votes, having been on the ticket for both Jackson and Adams, there was no need for the Senate to vote for a vice president.
Popular vote