Today we will talk with the prof. Stefano Luconi, professor of History and institutions of the Americas at the University of Padua and author with goWare of a guide book in the next presidential elections of electoral mechanisms, rather different to those we are used to in Europe, which bring a candidate to the White House in the presidential elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November which this year falls on the 5th.
This date is set by federal law and was chosen to allow sufficient time for the votes to be counted and for the transition between the outgoing and incoming administrations to officially take place on January 20, as long as it is not a Sunday, of the following year to the election.
Here is the fifth interview with the prof. Stefano Luconi on this crucial event not only for the United States, but for the whole world.
Do Americans directly elect the president and vice president?
No, Americans elect the holders of both offices indirectly. They go to the polls or vote by post to designate the delegates of the state where they live within a college of electors who then elect the president and vice president.
How does this actually happen?
The electoral candidates present themselves to the voters of each State gathered in opposing lists. Each is linked to one of the presidential candidates (and who has been nominated as his deputies) and contains a number of aspiring electors equivalent to those up for grabs in the state. The connection consists in the commitment of the members of the list to vote for a specific candidate.
What do voters find on the ballot if they vote for the president in a non-direct way?
On the ballot paper, citizens do not find the lists of aspiring electors but the names of the presidential candidates to whom the lists are linked. Therefore, if no disputes arise over the vote (as happened in 2020), once the electors have been elected (this year on November 5), it is not necessary to wait for them to vote in turn to find out who the president will be.
How many electors does a state have?
Each state has a number of electors equal to its seats in the Senate (two for all, regardless of population) and in the House (proportional to the number of inhabitants). The District of Columbia (the metropolitan area of Washington, which is not part of a state), although without a delegation to Congress, has three major electors. Since there are 100 members of the Senate and 435 members of the House, the electors are 538 in total. To be elected president you need an absolute majority of their votes, i.e. 270.
By what system are the electors elected?
The electors are attributed with the majority system in 48 of the 50 states: the list, i.e. the connected presidential candidate, who obtains the majority of votes wins all the electors of the state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which assign two electors to the list that obtains the majority of votes at the state level and another to the winner in each House district into which the two states are divided.
What consequences does this system have on the election of the President
The majoritarian system makes it important to win in the most populous states, as they have many electors, rather than achieving success in the majority of states. Furthermore, the votes for the defeated White House candidates (formally for the connected lists of electors) in individual states do not contribute to the distribution of electors. Therefore, if a candidate wins by a narrow margin in some large states that assign many electors and loses by a large margin in small states that have few electors, it may happen that the majority of the votes of the electors does not correspond to the majority of the votes popular.
Are there other factors to take into account?
Geography also plays a role. Each party is well established in some states where its success in presidential elections can almost be taken for granted. For example, the Republicans have not lost in Texas since 1976 and the Democrats have always won in the State of New York since 1988 and in California since 1992. On the other hand, there are states - called swing states (“swing” states) – where voter alignment is extremely fluid and the majority party varies from one election to another.
And in these states a big game is being played, right?
Very true. It is here, where the outcome of the vote is open, that the real game between the candidates is played and the outcome of the polls could prove decisive in winning the White House. After Florida transformed into a Republican bastion in recent years, today the swing states they are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
And this year how are the candidates placed in the Swing States?
One of Biden's biggest problems is that the polls show him defeated by Trump by a large margin in five of these six potentially decisive states and engaged in a head-to-head race in Wisconsin. Support for Israel, for example, penalizes him in Michigan, where a large Arab-American community lives. The phenomenon of swing states, however, is nothing new, although the “in the balance” states have changed over time.
Can you give us some examples of a state in the balance in the past?
For example, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century it was Indiana, New York, and Ohio. It is no coincidence that 16 of the 20 candidates for president and vice president presented by Republicans and Democrats between 1876 and 1900 resided in one of these three states: to try to ingratiate themselves with the voters of the decisive states, the parties lined up politicians who were also their fellow citizens .
Let's go back for a moment to the popular vote which, if I understand correctly, is not decisive in winning the White House?
In fact it isn't. Anyone who does not obtain a majority of citizens' votes can become president. The most recent example was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won nearly three million more popular votes than Donald Trump but the latter entered the White House. Previously, a similar situation had occurred on the occasion of the election of John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000, when the result of Florida was decisive, conquered by Bush with a majority of just 537 popular votes out of nearly 6 million valid ballots.
Does this seem very unpopular?
In fact it is not popular or very democratic and does not want to be.
In what sense does it not want to be. Who decided this?
This was established in 1787 by the drafters of the federal Constitution, the representatives of the socio-economic elite who had achieved independence from Great Britain. They abhorred democracy because they believed it to be a form of government that allowed the majority to prevail over minorities. Thus, between the people and the main federal office, they inserted the filter of the electors who, originally, were not even elected by the citizens but by the legislative assemblies of the States.
How can this rule which appears to be in contradiction with the exercise of democracy be modified?
To move to the more democratic direct election of the president, the Constitution would need to be changed. The amendments, however, require ratification by three-quarters of the states. The smaller ones are against the abolition of the electoral college so as not to lose the little political importance they still enjoy.
What advantages do these states have in maintaining this system?
Their position has its own logic. The need to win over voters state by state forces candidates to consider the interests of states with an electorate far smaller than a single neighborhood in a metropolis like New York or Los Angeles. Wyoming, Vermont or Alaska, for example, each have less than one million inhabitants, while the New York borough of Queens alone has almost two and a half million. If the president were voted for directly, the less populous states would be condemned to political marginality, because no candidate would take time and resources to compete with his rivals for a few hundred thousand votes out of a total of over 160 million.
Is the electoral system truly two-party?
We usually think of the US electoral framework in terms of bipartisanship, that is, of opposition between only the Democrats and Republicans. In reality, a plethora of independents and candidates from smaller groups are running for the White House. This year the best-known independent is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the senator of the same name killed in 1968 and nephew of President John F. Kennedy assassinated in 1963. There will also be candidates from the Green Party and the Libertarian Party in the running , which have yet to be named by the respective conventions.
And in the last presidential elections, how many candidates presented themselves?
In the 2020 elections there were 36 candidates for the White House, including the eccentric rapper and record producer Kanye West. Jo Jorgesen, of the Libertarian Party, garnered nearly two million popular votes nationwide, placing third after Biden and Trump, but eleven other candidates received less than a thousand each and independent Zachary Scalf just 29. West got slightly more of 66.000.
Has it ever happened that the independents determined that the quorum to be president was not achieved?
In fact, the multiplicity of candidates implies the theoretical possibility that no one will obtain 270 electoral votes. In this event, which occurred only in 1824 but not due to the presence of independents and when the quorum was lower because the Union did not yet have 50 states, the election of the president passes to the House, which chooses him with a ballot between the three candidates most voted by the electoral college.
So what happens?
In this case, each state has only one vote and the preferences of individual members of the House are counted within each state delegation to determine who should be assigned it.
