How a president is elected?

Answer 1

Every four years, each state appoints a number of electors equal to the total number of U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to which the state will be entitled on the next Inauguration Day, and D.C. appoints the same number of electors as the state with the smallest population (3). The U.S. Constitution allows every state legislature to use whatever method it chooses for determining how its electors are chosen. With the exception of when a territory is granted statehood too close to election day to hold a public election, every state has chosen to use some form of the popular vote method since the Civil War. In the popular vote method, the state asks the voting public to indicate their preference for President and Vice President as part of the November General Election. At some point each political party in each state gives the state's Secretary of State a list of people who have made a pledge that if they are appointed as an elector they will vote for that party's candidates. Each party's group of potential electors within a state is referred to as a slate of electors. After the General Election the state Secretary of State makes the electoral appointments based on which party's candidates were the most popular preferences among the state's voters. The most common form of the popular vote method is referred to as "winner takes all". That's when the whole slate of electors that is pledged to the ticket (the pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates running as a team) that got more votes than any other from the state's voting public get appointed. In other words, the state gives 100% of its electoral votes to the most popular preferences for president and vice president as determined by the state's voters. That's the way it's done in D.C. and in every state except Maine and Nebraska. Those two states use the popular vote method that is known as the congressional district method. That's when only two electors are appointed from the slate supporting the most popular choice across the whole state, and each additional appointment is made based on the most popular choice in each of the state's congressional districts. That almost always ends up as all of their votes going to the same ticket anyway. The only time Maine ever voted for more than one candidate in a presidential election was in 1828. Nebraska split its vice-presidential votes between two candidates in 1896, but the only other time they ever split their electoral votes was in 2008, when the Obama/Biden ticket won in one of its three congressional districts while the McCain/Palin ticket won in the other two as well as statewide.

On the Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which turns out to always be the sixth Monday after Election Day, each state's group of electors gets together within their own state and lists everyone getting votes for president and showing how many presidential votes each one got, then they make a separate list of everyone getting votes for vice president and showing how many vice-presidential votes each one got. Since 1804, each elector is allowed to cast one vote for president and one vote for vice president. All of the electors sign the "Certificates of Vote", and copies are made and sent to various places for archiving and backup and for the Sec. of State, but most importantly a copy is sent to the U.S. Vice President, who, as President of the U.S. Senate, is in charge of counting all of the electoral votes on the 6th of January in front of a joint session of Congress.

Occasionally an elector does not vote as he/she pledged to. Those people are referred to as "faithless electors". Those cases are quite rare; it happened only five times in the past 50 years. If you divide that by 538 electors per election for 12 elections, that comes to only 0.077%....

• In 1972 a Republican elector from Virginia voted instead for the Libertarian Party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees. That made the Libertarian Party's 1972 vice-presidential nominee the first woman ever to receive an electoral vote (her name is Theodora Nathan).
• In 1976 one of the Republican electors from Washington state cast his presidential vote for Ronald Reagan, who had lost that year's Republican presidential nomination to incumbent President Gerald Ford.
• In 1988 one of the Democratic electors from West Virginia gave his/her presidential vote to the vice presidential candidate and the vice presidential vote to the presidential candidate.
• In 2000 one of the Democratic electors from the District of Columbia withheld her votes in protest of D.C.'s lack of congressional representation.
• In 2004 one of the Democratic electors from Minnesota cast his/her presidential vote for the vice-presidential candidate and withheld his/her vice-presidential vote.

I failed to state at the top that during the spring and summer of a presidential election year each political party has a big confusing series of primary elections and/or caucuses culminating with the party's National Convention. That is the process by which the party picks one nominee for President and one nominee for Vice President. Actually, since about 50 years ago the presidential nominees have gotten to pick their own running mates (vice-presidential nominees), and the party just gives their approval.

Answer 2

he is by going through an election then all the votes are tallied up, then he/she has to be sworn in at the White House.

Answer 3

The electoral college.