The US presidential election will be held on December 14!

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

08 November 2020

In the US presidential election of 2016, Donald Trump garnered 63 million votes which was almost 3 million LESS that Hillary Clinton’s 65.9 million; yet Trump was declared the winner and was sworn in as president in January 2017. How can the person with fewer votes win an election?

The presidential election in the USA is not a direct election. Voters do not elect the president! That is the job of the Electoral College which comprises Electors from all the states.

The number of electors assigned to a state is equal to the sum of the seats it has in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. The number of members in the House of Representatives depends on the state’s population and so, the number of electors depend on the population as well.

So, when a candidate wins the election in a state, the number of votes garnered does not matter; what counts is how many electors (or Electoral College Votes) the state has. For this reason, the person with the highest nationwide vote count is not necessarily the winner of the presidential election.

In the 2016 presidential election, Trump got 304 Electoral College Votes against Clinton’s 227 and he was declared the winner. The question that many people (including Americans) ask is whether this is a good way to elect the country’s leader.

In Kenya, we only count the votes and the candidate with the highest number (plus a quarter in half the counties) wins. In parliamentary democracies (like India or the United Kingdom), they do not hold elections for presidents. Instead, they count the number of seats won and the leader of the party with the most seats becomes the president.

The American system tries to mix these two extremes by having an indirect presidential election. In most states, the electors are bound by the law to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote but in some, the electors can go against the voters’ choice.

This is not uncommon; in the 2016 US elections, 7 electors voted contrary to the will of the electorate – two against Trump and 5 against Clinton. These actions, however, did not change the outcome; Trump still garnered more Electoral College Votes than Clinton.

As you read this, the results of the public votes will most likely be out. However, the Electoral College has not voted. So, technically, the presidential election has not been done yet! It will be done on December 14.