Plurality electoral systems. Online Elections Learn More. Have a Question? Request Election Info Quick Contact. Yes No. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. The US presidential election takes place 3 November. But it's possible the candidate with the most votes from the public won't be the winner.
This is because the president is not chosen directly by the voters, but what's known as the electoral college. When Americans go to the polls in presidential elections they're actually voting for a group of officials who make up the electoral college. The word "college" here simply refers to a group of people with a shared task. These people are electors and their job is to choose the president and vice-president.
The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task. The number of electors from each state is roughly in line with the size of its population. Each state gets as many electors as it has lawmakers in the US Congress representatives in the House and senators. California has the most electors - 55 - while a handful of sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota and Washington DC have the minimum of three.
Each elector represents one electoral vote, and a candidate needs to gain a majority of the votes - or more - to win the presidency. Generally, states award all their electoral college votes to whoever won the poll of ordinary voters in the state.
For example, if a candidate wins Election results. Privacy policy About Ballotpedia Disclaimers Login. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators. Ranked-choice voting. Majority [9]. New Hampshire.
New Jersey. New Mexico. North Carolina. North Dakota. Rhode Island. South Carolina. South Dakota. West Virginia. Electoral systems policy. Primary elections policy. Redistricting policy. Recount laws. Ballot access for political candidates. As soon as one pile of ballots reaches , that candidate is awarded a seat.
Let us assume that candidate C was the first to reach the Droop quota of first-choice ballots. Continue drawing ballots out of the ballot box and placing them in piles according to the first-choice candidate marked on the ballot. For example, if you pull out a ballot that indicates candidate C as first choice and candidate A as second choice, place the ballot in the pile for candidate A, since candidate C has already been awarded a seat.
Continue with Step 3 until another candidate reaches the mark. Then, continue carrying out Step 3 until you fill all the available seats. For example, let us assume that we have already elected candidate C on first-choice ballots alone, and that by combining second-choice ballots from candidate C with further first-choice ballots from the box, we have also been able to award a seat to candidate A.
How do we fill the third seat? We continue in a similar manner as before. Any ballots that list candidate C as the first-choice will be transferred to the second-choice candidate; if the second-choice candidate turns out to be candidate A who has also already been elected , then we will transfer them to the third-choice candidate.
Similarly, all first-choice ballots for candidate A will be transferred to the second-choice candidate indicated on the ballot; if the second-choice candidate turns out to be candidate C who has already been elected , the ballot is transferred to the third-choice candidate.
And so on. But what happens if, after distributing all first-choice ballots, no further candidates have reached the Droop quota and we still have empty seats to fill? In this case, simply eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of first-choice ballots and transfer those votes to the second-choice candidates. Repeat this step as many times as necessary always eliminating the lowest vote-getter in order to reach the number of votes mandated by the Droop quota.
As with party list systems, there are a variety of ways of conducting an STV election. STV can clearly be rather confusing. There is a strong movement for PR in the United Kingdom, with some political leaders arguing that STV should replace the current plurality system for electing parliamentarians to the House of Commons. There is a similar movement in the United States, although since few Americans could even explain how the Electoral College works, they are probably not going to learn STV any time soon.
In other words, it is the way that votes are translated into seats in parliament or in other areas of government such as the presidency. There are many different types of electoral systems in use around the world, and even within individual countries, different electoral systems may be found in different regions and at different levels of government e.
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