America’s tedious presidential election process

Every American has the right to elect this great nation’s president. But this election process is not all that simple. There is something known as an electoral college, which is constituted by universal voting process and consists of merely 538 votes. The candidate, who can muster 270 votes in the electoral college can claim the Presidency of the United States of America. It is not the plurality in popular voting, which decides the victor. It is the coast to coast electoral college, which in fact calls the shots. During the nation-wide polling, the candidate getting the highest number of votes from a particular state, gets all the electoral college votes of that state for the coveted post of the president. Loss by a single vote out of millions cast, results in loss of all the electoral college votes from that particular state from the losing candidate to the winner.

America has 438 members in the House of Representatives, each member gets one vote in the electoral college. This way the states with the highest population get votes in accordance with their population. But irrespective of the population of the state, two senators are elected from each state and each senator gets one electoral vote. This arrangement accords more important to the smaller less populated states. Technically a state with even one member in the House of Representatives gets a minimum of three votes, because of two senators elected from each state. This way the weightage of electoral college votes from the largest states like California, Texas, Florida and New York gets reduced. This system has been working very successfully most of the time in the past. But in year 2000, Albert Gore (Al Gore) of the Democratic Party received half a million more directly cast votes compared to his Republican Party rival George W. Bush Junior, but only about 500 more votes received by George W. Bush in Florida, even before the legally mandatory completion of the recount, which was left incomplete due to the intervention of the supreme court, George W. Bush was declared elected. This was the most controversial election result, in which the reputation of the supreme court got tarnished very badly.

Another similar election was held four years ago in 2016. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate received three million more popular votes than her Republican rival Donald Trump, but since he got merely a little more than 1% plurality in votes in three Northern states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the electoral college gave the winning number of votes to Donald Trump and he was declared elected as the President of the United States of America.

This time in the nationwide polls, the Democratic Candidate Joe Biden is consistently leading his Republican rival by nearly an 8 percent margin, but Joe Biden’s apple cart can also be upset by the tricky electoral college, if Donald Trump narrowly wins most of the smaller states. Trump is hopeful of victories in a majority of small states in the pot belly of America consisting of agricultural Mid-West and the sun-belt states on the Southern Sea-board of the country. That is why both candidates are campaigning hard in a handful of toss up states. Poll mathematics is simple. Donald Trump is going to win in the large states of Texas and Florida with more than sixty electoral college votes and is likely to sweep the pot belly and Sun-belt states with more than one hundred electoral college votes. He needs about 100 votes from the toss up states to get to 270 votes. Joe Biden is likely to get the biggest prizes of California and New York along with New Jersey with nearly one hundred electoral votes. He will get additional one hundred electoral college votes from New England, Washington State and Oregon. He is likely to win Delaware, Maryland and possibly Virginia. He needs about forty of electoral college votes from Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Nevada and possibly Ohio. If he wins Georgia and Florida, it will be a landslide victory for the Democratic Party.    

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