Educate me just how do american politics work?

So the another night watching the news Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama sega.I allways wondered just how the amercian voting,election system works anybody care to explain please?

EDIT:Ooops i forgot wrong forum sorry

[Cheeto]

Okay, here's the way I was taught it and this is skipping a lot of details.

First a person announces their candidacy for one party or another (or independent, if they feel like losing), and it can be anyone as long as they fulfill the requirements to be president. They campaign for a while, make people like them, and then come the primaries. Each state will hold either a primary or a caucus (except Texas, which has both). In a primary, you go and vote for either a democratic candidate you like or a republican candidate you like. In a caucus you elect a delegate to go and do the voting. At the end of that is the national convention for each party, where all the delegates you elected or told who you want will do the actual voting for one candidate or another. Now this is all just to decide who will run for president on a certain party's ticket. So the democrats will pick one of their people (Hillary or Obama) and the republicans will pick one of theirs (pretty much just McCain at this point). Once that's done, you now have two candidates for the presidency and they start to campaign all over again for your presidential vote.

Once election day comes, you go back to the polls and cast your vote for who you want to be PRESIDENT this time, not just a nominee. Again each state does this part differently, but this is where the electoral college comes in. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on population. In some states, they hand out the electoral votes proportionally to how many votes each candidate received from all the people (so 100 electoral votes and 10,000,000 people; if 2 million vote for one candidate then they receive 20 of those votes and the other person gets 80). Some states are winner take all. At the end of it, whoever has the most electoral votes wins the grand poobah asshole award of being the president.

This is a cut down version, there is also the question of districting, failsafes in case of a tie, and super delegates.

[Stellar]

Gerrymandering: When a party cuts district lines to increase their probability of winning an upcoming election. This is done to preserve house seats.

Useful pieces of knowledge:

House Seats: The incumbent has about a 98% win rate. The only competitive House seat election is an OPEN house seat election. This means neither potential candidates are an incumbent for said house seat.

Electoral College: A state is given a certain number of electoral college seats. This number comes from the total number of Senators + House Reps.
So, any state has to have at least 3 electoral votes: 2 Senators and 1 House Rep. The only exception is Washington D.C.

Primaries: This current primary election season is FAR more competitive than the standard nomination process. The Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary usually set the momentum for how the rest of the primaries are going to play out.


More to come when I'm not lazy

Thank's guys.

[Cheeto]

The only reason senators and representatives have such an easy re-election bid is because no ones knows shit about their reps or senators so they either don't vote or just vote for the guy in office to feel like they participated. They don't know who has what issues.

Except Ted Stevens.

[Stellar]

Very true. Competition is practically non-existent. No one cares enough to go out of their way to learn about their local Congressman or state Senator. I feel like it's the media's fault. If they placed more focus on political education rather than Paris Hilton's snatch, people might know something.

[2ltben]

The West Wing was on for seven years.

[HS the Wasp]

Someone could of just said "Not very well" and saved you some time.

[pornbeard]

the system was designed when our nation was a collection of states who considered themselves something like independent countries, and that had a lot of influence.


it doesnt really work that way anymore, but the old vestiges are still around, and are seen by many as being straight dumb. like the electoral college.

[2ltben]

the system was designed when our nation was a collection of states who considered themselves something like independent countries, and that had a lot of influence.


it doesnt really work that way anymore, but the old vestiges are still around, and are seen by many as being straight dumb. like the electoral college.

What other method do you suggest that would still keep America a two-party state?