Hi everybody, it's Bill Nigut again, here
at Georgia Public Broadcasting with our
ongoing series of reports about Campaign 2016.
We'll be coming to you throughout this election year, giving you information that we hope helps you
understand the process just a little bit
better, and leading up to that
all-important general election in November of this year.
So let's get going.
let's talk today about the general
election itself the election of a
president is really a two-step process
the first step is the one that we're all
very familiar with on election day
registered voters go to their polling
place and they cast ballots for their
choice for President of the United
States that's called the popular vote
but the popular vote isn't the end of
the process the next step is when the
electoral vote comes into play electoral
votes are voted by members of the
electoral college and it's these
individuals are the ones whose actual
votes elect the President of the United
States so how do we determine the number
of electoral votes that each state gets
the number of electors is basically
determined by the number of congressmen
and Senators in each state that's 538
total electors from around the United
States so what that means is that to
actually be elected president a
candidate has to win 270 of those
electoral votes here in Georgia we have
16 electoral votes that makes us
important in the process it's one of the
bigger states out there so here's what
happens you go to the polls or your
parents go to the polls on Election Day
and you they choose their candidate at
the end of the election day we see which
candidate has won Georgia the electors
from Georgia are obligated when they
meet as part of the electoral college to
cast their votes for the people that
have been picked by the popular vote in
Georgia and those votes in the electoral
college go to help a candidate win the
necessary 270 votes so the electoral
college becomes more important than you
might think it's not just some arcane
process that's been going on in this
country since our first presidential
elections it's still important in the
strategic thinking about each campaign
so let's talk about
as we've already said that Georgia has
16 electoral votes but the bigger states
include California with 55 New York with
29 Texas with 38 so because they have
such large pools of electoral votes
campaigns want to make sure they can win
in those states to help build the total
toward 270 they're going to need now
California is typically a democratic
state New York is often democratic and
Texas is almost always Republican too so
in a general election campaign a
candidate may decide not to focus too
much attention on those states because
they're reliably either democratic or
republican despite the large number of
electoral votes that those states will
deliver so instead
campaigns focus on what we call swing
states a great example is the state of
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania can go either
Democrat or Republican and so it's
usually a very very highly competitive
state for general election candidates
between Republicans and Democrats there
are a lot of people out there who think
the electoral college should be
eliminated and a president should be
elected by popular vote but right now
it's the best system we've got see you
again next time
you
