Who is elected president if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes?

Answer 1

After each political party selects its candidate for president (usually in the summer preceding the presidential election), a general election is held on the first Tuesday of November every four years to select the President of the United States. The next presidential election will be November 4, 2008. In order to understand how a president is elected you need to know about the Electoral College. The electoral college is the group of electors from every state and the District of Columbia that convenes to actually select the president. Each state has as many electors as it does representatives in Congress, so there 100 Senators plus 435 Congressmen plus 3 from the District of Columbia. All totalling 538 electors. These electors meet in their respective state capitols in December to cast their ballots for president. In order for a candidate to be elected president, the candidate must get a majority of these electoral votes, or at least 270. (So actually a presidential candidate can actually win the majority of votes in the entire U.S. but not be elected president, such was the case in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000) Each state & D.C. has a set of electors for each presidential candidate. The state will submit the electors for the candidate who receives the majority of votes in that state. The votes of the electors, certified by the states, are sent to Congress, where the president of the Senate opens the certificates and has them counted in the presence of both houses of Congress on January 6. The new president is inaugurated at noon on January 20. So as you can see, voters actually cast their votes for the presidential electors, not for the President directly. SOURCE: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0101087.html

Answer

1) Candidate announces plan to run for office.

2) Candidate campaigns to win delegate support.

3) Caucuses and primary elections take place in the states.

4) Nominee for president is announced at national party conventions.

5) Citizens cast their votes.

6) The electoral college casts its votes.

7) The president is inaugurated.

Answer 2

If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the Twelfth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that the U.S. House of Representatives will select the president, with each of the fifty state delegations casting one vote, and the U.S. Senate will select the vice-president.

Answer 3

no- not necessarily. The final election is made by the electors of the electoral college who are apportioned by state---winner take all in most states. Thus a candidate can pile up popular votes by winning with a huge majority in the states that he wins and losing the states that he loses by a slim majority and still lose the election by losing too many states. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison and George W. Bush in 2000 all were elected without winning the popular vote.

Answer 4

In this event, which happened once (in 1824) the House of Representatives chooses the President.

Answer 5

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