US Presidential Elections - Primaries, Caucuses and More

Now that, Super Tuesday is over and results are out, I would like to give an account of US presidential elections, primaries, caucuses and more.

As we all know US is one of the largest democracies of the world, I wondered when I learnt about the internal democracy in place in their political party system as against the "High Command" system of India.

US is a presidential democracy in which president is elected INDIRECTLY for every four years. But the process of election starts one year before the ongoing president steps down as the president. The different phases involves:

1) Selection of presidential nominee from both the parties in the national conventions held in fag August(Democrates) and early September(Republicans).

2) Campaigning of both parties having selected their presidential nominees.

3) Election of Electoral College who chooses president.

4) Election of the president by the electoral college.

5) Disbanding Electoral College.

Explanation:
=========

The two major parties in US are democrats and republicans. The candidates who want to be nominated as preisdential contestents in both parties will form a core group and after assertaining their pros and cons, their capacity to raise money from people they register themselves with their parties as preisidential nominees from their parties. Generally more than two people will opt for that and there is inevitable competition among the members contesting for presidential nomination from the party. And there raises curtain for the PRIMARIES and CAUCUSES.

So now, What is a primary and what is caucus? How do they differ?
In a primary, voters simply cast their ballot and then go on with the rest of their day. But a caucus in more participative, with supporters showing up in person at designated sites throughout the state, such as a high school gymnasium, and standing up to be counted for their candidate.

In both, voters are ultimately choosing delegates to their party’s national convention, the body that formally nominates their presidential candidate.

State legislatures and state parties determine which form of balloting they prefer. In some states such as New Hampshire, the primary has become well entrenched and legislators are not likely to switch to a different system.

National Convention
===============

It is a quadrennial event at which the party formally nominates its presidential and vice presidential candidates. Then the question comes WHO nominates these presidential nominees? The answer to which is National convention delegates.

National convention delegates are those individuals authorized by the national and state parties to attend the parties’ national conventions and cast votes for the candidates running for the respective party’s nomination for President.

Each national party apportions a specific number of delegate votes to the various states and territories, based on state population and complex calculations of party strength and support in recent elections.

So, national convention delegates are PLEDGED to cast their ballot according to the results of primaries and caucuses. An associated press tracks all this process.
There are unpledged delegates too in both the parties who are free to cast their votes either of the candidates in the national party convention. These includes, mambers of congress, former president, vice-president etc..

Also, both the parties differ in the pledged and unpledged allocations and process as a whole. the process differs from state to state too.

After such an elaborate process, the presidential nominees are ready for actual contest. And now, the campaign starts for the presidential election.

The Election process:
===============

Voters in each state and in the District of Columbia will be casting their ballots on Nov. 4, 2008 for a slate of electors. Those electors, in turn, will cast votes on Dec. 15, 2008 for candidates to whom they are pledged.

For example, On the California ballot, for instance, will be a slate of 55 California Democratic electors pledged to the Democratic presidential candidate and a slate of 55 California Republican electors pledged to the Republican candidate.

A voter will chose one slate or the other (or perhaps the slate of a third party such as the Green Party). And the voter need not know the names of the members og eletoral college which consists of 538 members. It needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

And one key issue here is: Again taking above california example, there are 55 electoral college members. Let us assume Democrat candidate got 28 votes and republican got 27 seats. Whoever wins the state will be allocated TOTAL number of electoral seats, in our example total 55 electoral members are pledged to Democratic candidate only. This is the most criticised issue because it gives scope to a candidate with no popular support to win as a president of USA.