electoral system: USA

The nature of the electoral system in the United States of America is complex as there are a multitude of elective offices and many elections, not all of which are held at the same time. The president and vice-president, one-third of the Senate, and every member of the House of Representatives are elected at the same time every four years, and two years later the mid-term elections involve all representatives and one-third of the Senate.

Voters must meet a number of legal requirements or qualifications. Candidates who appear in the ballot must also have qualified under state law. Voting is a basic right guaranteed by the US Constitution, but individual states set many requirements for voting, concerned with residence, the need to register, the holding of primary elections, and the form of the ballot. It was not until 1920 that women were allowed to vote in presidential elections, and not until 1971 that suffrage was extended to 18-year-olds.

The US Constitution provides for the popular election of members of the House of Representatives, but initially senators were appointed by state legislatures until ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment (1913) provided for direct popular election. All members of the House are elected every two years, while one-third of the Senate is elected every two years, a senator serving for six years.

Electing the president The Constitution does not provide for the popular election of the president. Instead of voting directly for a president, the Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors equal in number to their representation in Congress, and the votes cast every four years in early November are for electors. The presidential candidate receiving the most votes in a state obtains the whole of the electoral college vote of that state. Each state sends its results to Washington, where the electoral votes are counted by Congress in joint session on 6 January. The candidate with a majority of the electoral votes is elected president, but custom not the Constitution has led to electors being chosen in the states by popular vote.

The presidential election is the most important single election, and it can, and has, been criticized on several grounds. First, the fact that if a candidate carries a state by a handful of votes he or she wins all of the electoral votes of that state. It is therefore possible for a president to be elected who has not received the largest number of popular votes. Second, the ‘winner-takes-all’ system further distorts the popular vote in that some small states have a larger electoral college vote than their population might warrant (each state having two senators irrespective of population), while candidates are tempted to seek to win in the populous states with large electoral college votes, perhaps appealing to small voting blocs whose support could be decisive in these states. Third, electors are not constitutionally bound to vote for the candidate to whom they are ostensibly pledged. In 1968 and 1972 single electors did defect. It is also possible for no candidate to win a majority of the electoral college vote necessary for election. Should this occur, the election is decided by the newly elected House of Representatives, each state delegation having one vote.

The election of the president consists, in fact, of a network of elections, nominations, and campaigns beginning some nine months before election day. There are three stages. First, there is a series of party primary elections within the parties required by state law. Potential presidential candidates seek the nomination of one or other of the major parties, who select their candidates at national party conventions. The delegates to these conventions represent state party organizations, and are chosen by a variety of methods, but increasingly they are elected, and are committed to supporting a particular presidential candidate. Thus the party primaries may be of critical importance in determining the final party nomination, and potential candidates can be eliminated or improve their chances of becoming the party candidate at this stage.

Laws concerning participation in party primaries (which are also held for elections to Congress) differ from state to state, most being closed (for registered party voters only), but some remain open to any registered voter. The national party conventions choose presidential nominees by a complex system of voting by delegates. In this respect the candidates of the major parties chosen to compete for election to the presidency in November must probably already have undergone two ‘elections’, the party primaries and the voting at the national convention.

State and local elections State and local elections need not be held at the same time as national ones, but in many instances they are. State governors are elected for varying terms, not necessarily at the same time as national office-holders, the nature of state elections being determined by state law.

Given the many offices elected at the national, state, and local level, ballot papers are often long and complicated, and voting machines are used in most stages. A majority of states also use the party-column ballot, listing the candidates of each party in a column, beside or under the party name or emblem. An alternative ballot form lists candidates by office, making straight party-ticket voting very difficult. Although some 40% of US citizens do not vote in presidential elections, the federal system and the tradition of electing even minor officials at the local level means that US elections are more frequent and are held for a larger number of political (and even administrative and judicial) offices than in most other countries.