Whether you believe your vote matters, or whether you live in a swing state, getting involved in politics through your vote does more than just influence elections your vote influences your direct community.īy choosing to get involved, you are one more person who cares about a cause. This election is one of the most important of our lifetime. So should you vote during the 2020 Presidential election? Yes, absolutely! If this happened, then the minority votes cast in that state by electoral college officials would count in your favor. Your vote matters in a state where you are a minority voter, as it is possible that a majority Democrat state could vote Republican, or vice versa.
In the primary election, your vote matters if you belong to the party choosing a candidate to run against the president in office, like Democrats in 2020, or a party whose president’s term limit has been reached, like Democrats in 2016.ĭuring the presidential election, your vote matters if you are living in a swing state. Your vote counts, but does it actually matter? That’s for you to decide. When it comes to federal matters such as the presidential election, decisions are influenced more by the democratically elected representatives we have put in place. The people’s vote more strongly influences decisions at the local level, where voters have the chance to participate directly in democratic processes. The Senate will cast votes for vice president.Īmerica is both a republic and a representative democracy. A total of 50 votes will be cast, with the president needing a majority to win. 14, the day the Electoral College meets in 2020, neither candidate reaches the 270 Electoral College votes required for earning the presidency, members of the House of Representatives grouped by their home state will vote to decide who leads the U.S. No faithless elector has ever swayed an election.
Their votes tallied for the candidate they chose not the candidate their fellow citizens preferred.įederal law does not require electors to vote for whomever wins the popular vote, but the Supreme Court has ruled states can penalize faithless electors, who can then be removed or replaced with an elector who will stand by their oath. This is rare although in 2016, seven presidential electors and six vice-presidential electors broke their “bind,” or their oath to vote according to the popular vote total. However, in 2016, the concept of the rare-but-legal “faithless elector” came into play.Ī faithless elector is an official who votes for a candidate who didn’t win their state. In all but two states - Maine and Nebraska - Electoral College officials cast their votes for whoever won the popular vote. The number of electoral officials each state sends to the Electoral College depends on the state’s population.Ībout a month after the states’ popular vote is decided, electoral officials meet in Washington, D.C. Instead, the people’s votes translate to the Electoral College, a body of officials that meets every four years with the purpose of electing the president and vice president. If there isn’t a public majority vote for a candidate, then our votes don’t decide the nominee the delegates choose on the behalf of the people.ĭuring the Presidential election, the people have the opportunity to vote again, but the popular vote does not directly decide the election. The people’s vote certainly matters in the primary election, when the constituents of the opposing party choose a candidate to run against the current president. I wanted to see to what degree our votes do, or do not, matter toward the election of the president in a constitutional republic like the U.S. I drove home and went online to find as much information as I could about the electoral process in America. It’s a rather devastating realization that ‘we the people’ have no real influence on what happens in our democracy. I hadn’t taken a political science course yet, and I was hoping my classmate was wrong. I, and many other students, were just discovering politics and acquiring a keen interest in government for the first time. His statement had me pondering the accuracy of his words because I couldn’t outright deny them. It’s the Electoral College that ultimately chooses our president.” As a young student, I was taken aback. A former classmate of mine once told me, “Your vote doesn’t even matter.
0 kommentar(er)
