How are Presidential elections conducted in US

The Coronavirus has hit the United States presidential election process hard with the authorities now considering conducting the polls using only in-mail voting. The primary elections are slated for November 3 and the primaries are underway. 

The US elections, which are held every four years, follow an elaborate electoral system as spelled out in the US Constitution. Here’s all you need to know ahead of the presidential election: 

How the voting system works

Polling is conducted across all 50 states in the US in a single phase. Voters choose not only their choice for president, but also the vice-president. The popular vote in each state determines the selection of a set of members of the electoral college, who pledge to support a given candidate.

What is the electoral college

The electoral college consists of 538 members. The number of members that a state gets is based on the population size.  California, the most populous state, has 55 electors. Some other sparsely populated states like Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming have only three electors each. 

The president and the vice-president are elected by the electoral college in December.

What does it take to win?

The successful candidate must amass 270 electoral votes, an absolute majority of the 538 electors.

Who are the candidates in the fray?

The US elections are bipartisan, with the only two parties in fray being the Democratic Party and the Republicans. The Democrats have a liberal outlook, while the Republicans take a conservative stand on most policies. 

The Democratic primaries began with a mammoth list of candidates, all of whom had been campaigning hard for the last one year. But as the public vote started coming out, candidates started dropping out of the race. After several rounds of polling, former vice-president Joe Biden was chosen as the official presidential nominee from the Demoratic party.  

The Republicans will also have a primary, but no prominent party member has announced their name yet. In that scenario, US president Donald Trump is expected to sail through the primaries and face Biden.

What are the primaries 

The primaries are a series of polls conducted by both the parties to finalise their presidential nominee. Each candidate is expected to amass a majority of delegates who will in turn nominate them.

What is mail-in voting?

Under the mail-in voting system, an electorate votes by email. These votes are collected much before the actual day of voting. With most of the country under some form of lockdown, this method has gained prominence. Several states are now pushing for the primaries to be conducted using only mail-in voting. 

Trump has vehemently opposed the idea of conducting the November polls through mail-in voting saying that it is not a reliable process. “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting. I think people should vote with Voter ID,” Trump said during a press conference.