It’s finally Friday, and you’ve decided to go out to dinner. Between you and your four friends, it’s not too big of a deal trying to pick the perfect place to eat. Three of you want to go to this great Italian place down the street. Since most of you agree, you’re on your way.
That’s voting simplified.
But what happens when your group of friends becomes a population of three hundred million and you’re no longer voting on a restaurant but on whether or not to declare war?
On such a large scale and with so much at stake, it becomes that much more important to have a fair, working voting system.
As the presidential election approaches, the stakes are as high as ever. Next month, the United States will decide who will run the country for the next four years.
If that sounds like heavy stuff to you, it’s because it is. Selecting our president, and selecting politicians at any level, is a huge responsibility. It’s a privilege, too. If somebody wants political power, they have to go through us: the people.
During the past months, you’ve seen a news cycle saturated with polls, confusing half-explanations of the Electoral College, and results of these things called caucuses. So as our country prepares to take to the polls, we take a look at how that works.
Foundation of democracy
First stop: democracy.
The idea of a group of individuals making decisions together is estimated to be much older than what records can tell us. Historians say it’s possible that tribes of people from all corners of the world at one point used something resembling democracy. But the case of ancient Greece is unique in its documentation and impact on modern systems of government.
Way back in the year 507 BCE, an Athenian leader had a brave new idea. Up until that time, the right to make political decisions was based on the family or tribe people belonged to. The word “aristocrats” actually refers to the group of people who held power for long periods of time, unchecked.
But along came a man named Cleisthenes. Coming from a once powerful family, he knew what it was like to hold power. But instead of fighting for people like him to maintain control, he sought to make it available to everyone.
He called it demokratia. It abolished political distinctions between the aristocrats and commoners. It featured a system of three branches of government made up of people from all backgrounds.
Officials were mostly chosen by lot (at random), not elected. This system wouldn’t last long, but the idea of anyone having the ability to participate in government laid the foundation for democracies we see today. Historians hail it as one of ancient Greece’s most enduring contributions to the modern world.
The US election system
More than two thousand years after Athenians gave demokratia a shot, a collection of former British colonies were pulling themselves together under one important document.
At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, delegates worked to find the best system for presidential elections. (Learn more in our issue on constitutional law.) Drafters were tasked with a balancing act, having to please those who feared the federal government becoming too powerful and those who wanted to unite the various states under one government. They discussed several possibilities for who should have the power to decide: Congress, state governors, a special group of members of Congress chosen at random, or the citizens through direct popular vote.
Finally, a committee of delegates emerged with a plan to put all other plans to shame. Despite the complexity of the situation, this plan seamlessly and effortlessly made everyone happy in a clean-cut, simple manner.
Well, not exactly.
The delegates agreed upon the Electoral College system. Neither Congress, governors, nor citizens would directly select the president. It was the responsibility of the states to select electors who would then cast a vote for president.
Electors are people, and the Electoral College isn’t really a college. A state gets a number of electors equal to its combined total of senators and representatives in Congress. The number of a state’s representatives is determined by population, meaning states like Texas and California have many more electors than, say, North Dakota or Wyoming.
So when you cast a vote for a presidential candidate, you’re not directly voting for them; you’re telling your state’s electors which way you want them to vote. This system creates an interesting quirk: a candidate can win the presidency even when they don’t win the popular vote. (You can learn more about when that’s happened in our other feature article in this issue.)
Timeline of today’s election process
Theoretically, millions of people are qualified to run for president; so how do we narrow it down to just two people? It’s a long and tedious process that involves campaigning, endorsements, polls, and lots of voting.
When someone wants to run for president, the first hurdle are the primary elections, where each political party selects the person who will be their presidential nominee. Right now, we have a two-party system in which Democrats and Republicans dominate elections, though there are other parties who go through similar processes.
The primary election includes voting, but also a number of convoluted processes like caucuses and conventions. Once a candidate becomes a party’s nominee, they go back to campaigning. They travel all across the country in order to sway voters in their direction. The process also includes televised debates, which will take place throughout October.
Finally, on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, voters head to the polls for the general election. If a candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College votes, they become president. If nobody has the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the president, and the Senate chooses the vice president.
What are polls for?
Though the outcome of the election ultimately rests with what voters do on election day, people attempt to predict how elections will turn out throughout the entire process. They do so with polls.
Essentially, a poll is an unofficial vote. Whoever is conducting a presidential election poll asks a group of people who they are voting for, or a range of other questions to try and gauge public opinion of particular candidates.
Modern polling began in 1936 when statistician George Gallup used statistical methods to accurately predict that Franklin D. Roosevelt would beat Alf Landon. Until around the 1990s, Gallup and other polling agencies were the primary sources of polls. That’s when newspapers jumped on board and started doing their own. Now, along with polling agencies and newspapers, many candidates conduct their own polls.
But what good is a poll if it’s not accurate? In order to ensure that a poll is reliable, it’s important to have a sample group (the people you poll) that is large enough to reflect the population (the whole country). For example, you could run your own poll by asking your best friends who they will vote for—but that’s probably not an accurate way to predict what the entire US population will choose.
Another complicating factor is that pollsters try to make sure their sample group is representative of the population. For example, if a poll only asked men who they were going to vote for, it probably wouldn’t be very useful because it wouldn’t let you know what women think. Pollsters also work to make sure they poll people of different races, with different incomes, from different states, and more.
The role of math
The US presidential election is an incredibly complicated process, and it’s only through math that we can really understand what’s happening. Polls are our way to figure out what the country thinks so we can make an educated guess at what will take place on election day.
But, even more importantly, math is used to ensure that our voting systems are fair. As this month’s guest article shows, math can bring to light all the complications of voting systems, from old school democracy to the United States’ Electoral College system.
Read more
Learn how polls work at The Week.
Get an overview of ancient Greek democracy at the HISTORY.
Follow the New York Times‘ advice on how to follow polls.
Understand the history of the Electoral College at the US Election Atlas.