Three Rs of Presidential Election Process

The Three Rs of the Presidential Election Process

They are:
Read the rules
Write the rules
Do the math



As we know, the election process begins with the primary elections and caucuses and moves to nominating conventions, during which political parties each select a nominee to unite behind. The nominee also announces a Vice Presidential running mate at this time. The candidates then campaign across the country to explain their views and plans to voters and participate in debates with candidates from other parties.

During the general election, Americans head to the polls to cast their vote for President. But the tally of those votes—the popular vote—does not determine the winner. Instead, Presidential elections use the Electoral College. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes. In the event no candidate receives the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President.

The Presidential election process follows a typical cycle:
Spring of the year before an election – Candidates announce their intentions to run.
Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year – Primary and caucus debates take place.
January to June of election year – States and parties hold primaries and caucuses.
July to early September – Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.
September and October – Candidates participate in Presidential debates.
Early November – Election Day
December – Electors cast their votes in the Electoral College.
Early January of the next calendar year – Congress counts the electoral votes.
January 20 – Inauguration Day

   
The U.S. Constitution requires the Presidential candidates to be:
A natural-born citizen of the United States
At least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.

Any person who meets these requirements can declare his or her candidacy for President at any time. Candidates must register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) once they receive contributions or make expenditures in excess of $5,000. Within 15 days of reaching that $5,000 threshold, candidates must file a Statement of Candidacy with the FEC authorizing a principal campaign committee to raise and spend funds on their behalf.


Before the general election, most candidates for President go through a series of state primaries and caucuses. Though primaries and caucuses are run differently, they both serve the same purpose—to allow the states to help choose the political parties’ nominees for the general election.


What makes American presidential election process unique and US political system more robust and resilient, withstanding possible populist swaying toward either of the political spectrum extremes is the fact that state primaries are run by state and local governments, where voting occurs through secret ballot, whereas caucuses are private meetings run by political parties. In most cases, participants divide themselves into groups according to the candidate they support, with undecided voters forming into a group of their own. Each group then gives speeches supporting its candidate and tries to persuade others to join its group. At the end of the caucus, party organizers count the voters in each candidate's group and calculate how many delegates each candidate has won.

The private character of caucuses means that they are run by groups of wealthy private citizens who eventually determine which candidate deserves the majority of the electoral votes based upon the vested interests of the leadership of those private meetings. In this way the most prominent groups of citizens with vested interests in the political stability and economic equilibrium of the country prevent the society as a whole from sliding toward populism and inadvertently - or through the ill will of external enemies - electing a candidate who would abuse the advantage of popular vote to his/her or a third party’s interest to the detriment of the vested interests of the main parties.

This circumstance is reinforced by the fact that primaries and caucuses are conducted as “open,” “closed,” or some hybrid of the two. During an open primary or caucus, people can vote for a candidate of any political party. During a closed primary or caucus, participants must be registered with a political party to vote for one of its candidates. “Semi-open” and “semi-closed” primaries and caucuses are variations of the two main types. The delegates representing some states by popular vote are counterbalanced by the delegates selected during the private meetings at caucuses. This way the candidate who wins the nomination receives the majority of delegates who in relatively equal proportions represent, on one hand, the interests of the majority of citizens through popular vote and, on the other hand, the vested interests of the most powerful groups of private citizens who run the country. This is what makes America a democracy while preserving the principle of federalism. It is possible for a candidate to receive the majority of the popular vote, but not of the electoral vote, and lose the Presidential election.

From the outset, it is the electoral votes what count in the end; even if a candidate wins the popular vote but they lose the electoral vote, they lose the election. In order to preserve this system without sliding toward a democratic populism or outright dictatorship, the rules that regulate the process of awarding delegates have to be very elaborate and complex. As a result, the parties have different numbers of total delegates due to the complex rules involved in awarding them. The requirements combine national and state political party rules and practices with aspects of federal and state election laws.
In 2016, a Democratic candidate must receive 2,383 of the estimated 4,765 delegates to become the party’s nominee. Democratic candidates must win at least 15 percent of the votes earned in a primary or caucus to receive any “pledged” delegates. Candidates generally receive pledged delegates on a proportional basis.
The 2016 Republican candidate must receive 1,237 of the estimated 2,472 delegates to win the party’s nomination. Depending on the state, delegates may be awarded proportionally, on a winner-take-all basis, or using a hybrid system. The percentage of primary or caucus votes a candidate must win to receive delegates varies from state to state.

There are two main types of delegates:

Pledged, or bound, delegates, who are required to support the candidate to whom they were awarded through the primary or caucus process.
Unpledged, or unbound delegates, or superdelegates, who are free to support any Presidential candidate of their choosing.

When the primaries and caucuses are over, most political parties hold a national convention during which the winning candidate receives a nomination. The superdelegates are often considered to have more power than other delegates because of their greater freedom to vote as they wish. Therefore, it is important who exactly those delegates are in order to predict which way the national convention will sway.

In the Republican Party, as in the Democratic Party, members of the party’s national committee automatically become delegates without being pledged to any candidate. There are three RNC delegates (the national committeeman, national committeewoman, and state party chair) for each state. According to RNC communications director Sean Spicer, "there are 168 members of the RNC" Those members comprise 7 percent of the estimated 2,472 delegates who will be seated at the convention. Party leaders and observers are concerned about how the RNC-aligned delegates will determine the outcome of the convention.

This year, those uncommitted delegates could be the ones who eventually decide the outcome of the Republican Party convention in favor of the candidate who lacks just enough electoral votes to claim victory. Which means this year’s delegate who has relied heavily on popular votes, defying the so-called insiders, is doomed unless he wins enough popular votes and also finds a way to sway the superdelegates on his side. This might be very difficult for him to do. Especially so, when the superdelegates are the members of the Republican National Committee, the party's governing body. Each state comes with one committeeman and one committeewoman, in addition to all state party chairs. Party rules also allocate three to Guam, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Therefore, when you cast your vote for President, you are actually voting for a group of people known as electors. The fact that electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party, that they may be State-elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate, increases the importance of the freestanding unpledged electors. They are part of the Electoral College, the process used to elect the U.S. President and Vice President. The Electoral College serves as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The process begins when political parties select the people who will serve as electors, The electors meet to vote for President and Vice President, and then Congress counts the electoral votes.    

There are a total of 538 electors. A candidate needs the vote of more than half (270) to win the Presidential election. Each state’s number of electors is equal to the number of its U.S. Senators plus the number of its U.S. Representatives. Washington D.C. is given a number of electors equal to the number held by the smallest state.

In 48 states, when a candidate receives the majority of votes, he or she receives all of the state’s electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that use the congressional district method. For example: Nebraska has five electoral votes (one for each of the three congressional districts plus two for the state’s senate seats). The winner of each district is awarded one electoral vote, and the winner of the statewide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes.
U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College.

Needless to say, that if a candidate who has been considered an outsider of his party has won the majority of the popular votes but failed to win the majority of electoral votes would not become the President. Whereas, the candidate who is known as insider is more likely to win the majority of electoral votes and popular votes. Such a candidate would be less likely to be willing to change the Presidential election process to diminish the role of the Electoral College. Because the Electoral College process is part of the U.S. Constitution, it would be necessary to pass a Constitutional amendment to change this system.

Therefore, in order to win the U.S. Presidential campaign, one needs to be an insider of his/her political party with close ties to the party leadership. Such are the rules. Even if the rules change, they are well known to everybody on the inside. Because the rules are being written by people on the inside for people on the inside to win the next election cycle. That’s why it is important to be an insider rather than an outsider when you begin your Presidential campaign. The rules are supposed not only to be read; they are supposed to be written. Sometimes, in advance of the election process, according to the changing political and economic conditions in the country.

Preparations for the next Presidential campaign usually begin long before the year of campaign and they require not only to be able to read the rules but to write and change them as well. However, this information is usually not concealed from the Presidential candidates. Even from the outsiders, if they are vigilant enough. This year, the changed rules are said to have been available online since last September. If  any of the candidates was upset with the results in some of the states recently, it was his own fault and the fault of his campaign team.

Repeatedly over the last few weeks, we have seen how some of the Republican Party insiders have been outmaneuvering the popular outsider. It seems that some of the insiders have demonstrated exhaustive knowledge of the delegate-selection process, a superior organization, and a political literacy that outmatched the basic political skills of the candidate who positioned themselves as outsiders and opponents of the current established politicians and their rules.

For example, Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz and his operatives had been on the ground in Colorado for almost eight months before the event, preparing for the March 1 precinct caucuses. By contrast, his major opponent Donald Trump’s team efforts in the state are said to have been too chaotic and ended up inadvertently directing votes toward Cruz delegates. Someone clearly has suffered from the disadvantage of not knowing how to read and/or write the basic rules of the current Presidential election process.

Last August, Republican Party's 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll in Colorado. The Colorado system was known to have favored anti-establishment candidates who drew a dedicated following among activists — as evidenced by Rick Santorum's victory in 2012 caucus. So the party's move was seen as intended to hurt GOP contenders such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, who would have received a boost if they won the state. The move is said to give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July 2016. Republican National Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.

When the United States Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a President (and Vice President, after 1800) based on their own preferences. They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Thus, the Constitution places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.

Electoral College, for its complexity, is a truly unique political tool. The Electoral College never actually meets as one body. Electors chosen on Election Day meet in their respective state capitals (electors for the District of Columbia meet within the District) on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, at which time they cast their electoral votes on separate ballots for president and vice president.

It serves its purpose but it makes things complicated. To an uninitiated, this part of American system looks like a rocket engine; and the whole body of knowledge related to American politics like rocket science. No wonder, simpler minds have always tended to simplify this process. The closest the country has ever come to abolishing the Electoral College occurred during the 91st Congress (1969-1971). The presidential election of 1968 resulted in Richard Nixon receiving 301 electoral votes (56% of electors), Hubert Humphrey 191 (35.5%) and George Wallace 46 (8.5%) with 13.5% of the popular vote. However, Nixon had only received 511,944 more popular votes than Humphrey, 43.5% to 42.9%, less than 1% of the national total.

Representative Emanuel Celler (D – New York), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to public concerns over the disparity between the popular vote and electoral vote by introducing House Joint Resolution 681, a proposed Constitutional amendment which would have replaced the Electoral College with simpler plurality system based on the national popular vote. With this system, the pair of candidates who had received the highest number of votes would win the presidency and vice presidency providing they won at least 40% of the national popular vote. If no pair received 40% of the popular vote, a runoff election would be held in which the choice of President and vice president would be made from the two pairs of persons who had received the highest number of votes in the first election.

However, the Electoral College has survived to this day. Perhaps thanks to that, so has the American political system that has proved resilient and effective. Moreover, it has been evolving. Mostly, it seems to have happened thanks to those small modifications and adjustments to the rules that took place with every new Presidential election cycle. Like a rocket system, American political system always requires tuning and upgrades to address contemporary conditions and challenges. Accordingly, one has to be also good at math to do all the numbers. In American political system, like in rocket science, without at least basic skills in arithmetics, it seems, you will never be able to understand how it works. And if you intend to master the U.S. Presidential electoral process and reach those cosmic altitudes in political career, you need to have at your disposal a team of true experts - real rocket scientists - who know how to do the numbers to calculate your future political trajectory with invariable accuracy.