Elections and voting: Why should they matter to you?
Once the primary season ends, the candidates who have won their party’s nomination shift gears to campaign in the general election. Although the Constitution calls for regularly scheduled elections, it does not specify when they should be held. Congress has set the date for presidential and midterm elections as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. This is different from parliamentary systems, in which the prime minister can call a national election at any time.
Candidates gearing up for a general election must make a number of changes in their campaign strategy. One is to shift their attention from winning over fellow party members to taking on the nominee of the other major party.
To appeal to a larger cross-section of voters, many candidates also decide to modify their political message. In the primaries, the ideas and promises that appealed to the party base, with its more extreme views, may need to be moderated to attract centrists and independents. Ideally, however, this move to the middle should be done in a way that does not upset or alienate the party base.
Democrat John Kerry faced this delicate balancing act during the 2004 election. During the primary season, Kerry presented himself to party voters as an ardent critic of the war in Iraq. He did this, in part, to drain support away from his Democratic opponent, Howard Dean. Dean’s strong antiwar views had fired up the party base.
Once Kerry had won the nomination, however, he began moving to the middle. In the run-up to the general election, he tried to soften his antiwar message to win more support from moderate and independent voters. However, his efforts backfired when his Republican opponent, George W. Bush, accused him of being a “flip-flopper” on the war issue. Kerry stuck to his more centrist position for the rest of the campaign, but he lost the election to Bush.
In the weeks leading up to the general election, candidates continue to hone their message and polish their image for voters. They spend increased time on the campaign trail, making public appearances and giving variations of their standard stump speech. This term harkens back to the days when candidates would stand on a tree stump to deliver their speeches.
During these final weeks, candidates make every effort to remain in the public eye. One way to do this is to stage photo opportunities, or photo ops, for the media. The hope is that pictures of the event will appear on the nightly news and in the next morning’s newspaper.
For congressional candidates, a favorite photo op involves joint appearances with the president or with their party’s presidential nominee. The candidate hopes that being seen in public with such a powerful figure will give his or her campaign an extra boost. This boost, known as the coattail effect. may help a struggling candidate ride into office on the “coattails” of the next president.
The coattail effect does not always work as hoped. In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidential election, but his coattails were too short to help fellow party members. The Democrats lost ten seats in Congress that year. Four years later, however, Clinton won reelection with longer coattails. In the 1996 election, the Democrats won eight seats in Congress. The coattail effect remains unpredictable, working for some candidates in some campaigns while having little effect in others.
Another way for candidates to boost their exposure is to take part in televised debates. In presidential elections, these debates offer many voters their first opportunity to see and hear the candidates discuss the issues in any depth. However, the image that candidates project in debates may be just as important as what they have to say. A candidate who is attractive, well-spoken, and relaxed during a debate will probably fare better than one who appears stiff and ill at ease on screen.
The impact of televised debates on voters is hard to assess. What candidates do in debates may sway some voters, while simply confirming for others the choice they have already made. Nonetheless, candidates prepare carefully for these televised events, knowing that even though a good performance may not win them that many votes, a poor showing could lose them the election.
In the last days before the election, campaign workers focus on getting out the vote. This means making sure that all voters who are likely to support their candidate actually cast their ballots.
In the past, almost all votes were cast at a designated polling place within each precinct. Today, the majority of Americans still go to the polls to vote on Election Day. However, a growing number of voters now cast absentee ballots, or mail-in ballots that voters can use instead of going to the polls. Since 2000, for example, the state of Oregon has conducted all of its elections by mail. A few states also allow early voting at designated voting places in the month before Election Day.
Campaign organizations use various tactics to get out the vote before and on Election Day. Before the election, volunteers talk with voters by phone or by walking through precincts and ringing doorbells to find out who is likely to support their candidate. On Election Day, they set up phone banks staffed by volunteers who call supporters and urge them to vote. The organizations may also offer free rides to voters who have no other way of getting to the polls.
Campaigns may also send poll watchers to polling places on Election Day. Poll watchers are volunteers who monitor the voting process. Their main job is to prevent voter fraud or efforts to intimidate voters. Poll watchers may also observe the tallying of ballots to ensure that all votes are properly counted.
Because most voting regulations are set by states and counties, voting methods and types of ballots have varied from one community to the next. In the past, most voters used some form of paper ballots or lever-controlled voting machines. Some paper ballots are relatively easy to use and count, while others are not. The infamous butterfly ballot used in Florida in the 2000 general election confused many voters. As a result, many voted for the wrong candidate by mistake.
Florida also had trouble with punch-card ballots in the 2000 election. Voters mark these ballots by punching out small bits of paper, called chads, beside their choices. Sometimes, however, the chad does not fully detach from the ballot. These “hanging chads” make it almost impossible for the machines used to count ballots to complete an accurate tally. Every time such ballots are fed through the vote-counting machine, it comes up with a different count.
Florida was not alone in having problems. Across the country in the 2000 elections, almost 2 million votes were not properly counted by vote-counting machines. To solve this problem, Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The goal of this act is to help states replace their old voting machines and punch-card ballots with more accurate voting technology, such as optical scanners and touch-screen machines. Progress, however, has been slow, in part because of questions raised about the accuracy and reliability of the newer electronic voting systems.
Once the votes are counted, the winners are declared. In most presidential elections, the winner receives a majority of the popular vote. That was the case in 2004, when George W. Bush received 51 percent of the votes cast.
When three or more candidates are competing, the winner sometimes receives less than 50 percent of the vote. This occurred in both the 1992 and the 1996 elections, when Bill Clinton won the presidency with 43 percent and 49 percent of the popular vote, respectively. In both cases, a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, captured enough votes to prevent either of the major party candidates from winning a majority.
Our nation’s winner-take-all system has a major effect on presidential elections. In most states, the candidate winning the popular vote captures all of that state’s Electoral College votes. Nebraska and Maine, however, use a different system. They allot Electoral College votes based on the popular vote in each of the states” congressional districts.
Critics point out that the Electoral College system encourages candidates to focus on populous states with the largest number of electors. In theory, a candidate can win the presidency by capturing the 11 largest states and losing the other 39.
In general, candidates pay the most attention to a few battleground states, where the vote is likely to be close, and ignore states where the outcome is more predictable. For example, a Republican presidential candidate can expect to win Texas and other conservative southern states. Similarly, a Democratic candidate can expect to win Massachusetts and other liberal New England states. For that reason, both sides target states such as Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico, which can be won by either candidate.
Our winner-take-all system tends to reinforce the nation’s two -party system. Most public offices go to candidates of the two major parties because one or the other is likely to win the popular vote. Third parties, which usually have a narrower appeal, have much less hope of winning seats in Congress or state legislatures. Although the winner-take-all system promotes stability in government, it tends to exclude less-mainstream candidates from public office.
In contrast, many European democracies have adopted a proportional representation system. In these countries, citizens usually vote for parties rather than for individual candidates. A party wins seats in parliament based on its proportion of the popular vote. For example, if a party wins one-third of the vote in an election, it is awarded approximately one-third of the seats in parliament. Proportional representation thus gives smaller parties a chance to take part in government.
As important as the popular vote may seem, it is the Electoral College vote that decides presidential elections. The framers of the Constitution devised the Electoral College system because they did not trust voters who were spread out over 13 states to choose the head of the executive branch. Instead, they gave that responsibility to a group of electors who might better know who was best suited for that job.
At first, each state legislature chose its own electors. In 1789, all 69 electors who had been chosen this way cast their ballots for George Washington as president. A majority cast their votes for John Adams as vice president. After 1800, states began allowing voters to choose electors. When you vote for president in the next election, you will actually be voting for electors who have promised to support your candidate.
The number of electors from each state equals the number of that state’s representatives in Congress. For example, Virginia has 2 senators and 11 House members, giving it a total of 13 electoral votes. Washington, D.C., has 3 electoral votes. There are 538 electors in all, which means that a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes to become president. If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives selects the president, with each state casting one vote.
Not surprisingly, the Electoral College system has provoked controversy over the years. The chief criticism is that it is undemocratic. Critics point to three elections in U.S. history – in 1876, 1888, and 2000 in which the candidate who won the popular vote failed to win the Electoral College. The most recent example was AI Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000.
For years, critics have called for a reform of the Electoral College. Most advocate electing the president by direct popular vote. This change would require a constitutional amendment.
However, many Americans also support the Electoral College system. Some states, especially smaller ones, fear that a reform would reduce their influence in presidential elections. Under the popular vote system, candidates might be motivated to only campaign in large states.
An alternative option is the congressional district method. Under this method, now used in Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the popular vote in each congressional district gets that district’s electoral vote. The overall winner in the state receives the two additional electoral votes that represent the state’s senators. The consequence of this method is that if it was widespread, candidates might only focus on campaigning in specific districts rather than in entire states.
Another option is the national popular vote. Under this plan, states would cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. This change can be implemented by state legislatures, thereby avoiding the need for a constitutional amendment. In 2007, Maryland became the first state to adopt this Electoral College reform. The reform will not go into effect, however, unless approved by enough states to constitute a majority of the Electoral College vote. Critics claim that there is little benefit to this method and argue that it diminishes federalism since it reduces the states” role in elections.