This November 5 the citizens of the United States vote in the U.S. elections 2024 the country’s next president: the vice president Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. Unlike in Spain, where the president is elected by the Congress of Deputies elected at the polls, the U.S. electoral process is based on the presidentialist system.which has its own particularities.
The most basic of these is that citizens directly elect the president in a process separate from the election of representatives and senators, but there are many others, such as the election of candidates, the appointment of the president or the voting system.
The electoral process begins months in advance with the caucuses
In reality, the electoral processes in the United States, a country where democracy and tradition go hand in hand, begin long before voting day, lasting almost two years. The electoral cycle begins in the spring of the year prior to the election, where everyone citizens who want to run for president must register their candidacy. with the Federal Electoral Commission.
A few months later, during the summer, the debates begin within each party in each State, in the political assemblies or caucus of each party. Between January and June of the election year, the caucus of each party resolve in assembly their preferred candidatewhich normally is ratified during the summer by the National Convention of his party.. The presidential candidate then announces his candidate for president, his ‘running mate’ in the elections.
Each state chooses the direction of its delegates’ votes
After a few months of debates, rallies and campaign events, comes the ELECTION DAYwhich, unlike in Spain, are a fixed day: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in Novembera rule that has its roots in U.S. history.
Each state organizes its elections: in all of them it is possible to vote in person, while some of them enable voting by mail and early voting. In the presidential elections, they are not electing their representatives in Congress, but rather the support for a presidential candidate through their electoral delegates.
What does this mean? Each state has a number of electoral delegates., and all of them should support in the Electoral College. (which is formed with the delegates from all the states months after the election) the candidate who received the most votes in his or her state.. The votes of these delegates are not distributed: if a candidate has won in a state, even by a single vote, all of its electoral delegates support that candidate: it is the system winner-takes-all. The number of delegates from each state is allocated according to the population of each territory.
Although informally the media proclaim a winner during election night, making projections to find out which candidate has won the most electoral delegates, the legal process drags on for months after the elections.
The Electoral College chooses the president based on what the citizens decide.
When all the states have done their recounts and validated their results, the electoral delegates, a total of 538, meet in a joint session of Congress and the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.: the Electoral College. There, each state awards its delegates to the candidate with the most votes in its territory.. The candidate with the most delegates (a majority of 270) is proclaimed president-elect, and takes office on January 20.
Since the Electoral College is a body appointed by the American people for a single purpose, it can be said that. the citizenry directly elects the president, although this does not necessarily have to be the one with the most votes, but the one that has obtained the most electoral delegates.
This is a system diametrically opposed to the one we have in Spain.where it must be a majority of elected deputies (in elections governed by proportionality) who elect the president. In this investiture, the parties can support one candidate or another on the basis of pacts, and not on the basis of what is explicitly expressed by the citizens, although they act on their behalf.