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The election of the President and Vice President of the United States is an indirect vote in which citizens cast ballots for a slate of members of the U.S. Electoral College. These electors, in turn, directly elect the President and Vice President. Presidential elections occur quadrennially on Election Day, which since 1845 has been the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, coinciding with the general elections of various other federal, state, and local races. The 2016 U.S. presidential election is scheduled for November 8. The process is regulated by a combination of both federal and state laws. Each state is allocated a number of Electoral College electors equal to the number of its Senators and Representatives in the U.S. Congress.〔Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution〕 Additionally, Washington, D.C. is given a number of electors equal to the number held by the smallest state.〔Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution〕 U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College. Under the U.S. Constitution, each state legislature is allowed to designate a way of choosing electors.〔 Thus, the popular vote on Election Day is conducted by the various states and not directly by the federal government. Once chosen, the electors can vote for anyone, but – with rare exceptions like an unpledged elector or faithless elector – they vote for their designated candidates and their votes are certified by Congress, who is the final judge of electors, in early January. The presidential term then officially begins on Inauguration Day, January 20 (although the formal inaugural ceremony traditionally takes place on the 21st if the 20th is a Sunday). The nomination process, consisting of the primary elections and the nominating conventions, was never specified in the Constitution, and was instead developed over time by the states and the political parties. The primary elections are staggered generally between January and June before the general election in November, while the nominating conventions are held in the Summer. This too is also an indirect election process, where voters cast ballots for a slate of delegates to a political party's nominating convention, who then in turn elect their party's presidential nominee. Each party's presidential nominee then chooses a vice presidential running mate to join with him or her on the same ticket, and this choice is rubber-stamped by the convention. Because of changes to national campaign finance laws since the 1970s regarding the disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns, presidential candidates from the major political parties usually declare their intentions to run as early as the Spring of the previous calendar year before the election.〔 Thus, the entire modern presidential campaign and election process usually takes almost two years. ==History== Article Two of the United States Constitution originally established the method of presidential elections, including the Electoral College. This was a result of a compromise between those constitutional framers who wanted the Congress to choose the president, and those who preferred a national popular vote. Each state is allocated a number of electors that is equal to the size of its delegation in both houses of Congress combined. With the ratification of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution in 1969, the District of Columbia is also granted a number of electors, equal to the number of those held by the least populous state. However, U.S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College. Constitutionally, the manner for choosing electors is determined within each state by its legislature. During the first presidential election in 1789, only 6 of the 13 original states chose electors by any form of popular vote.〔Out of the 13 original states during the 1789 election, 6 states chose electors by some form of popular vote, 4 states chose electors by a different method, North Carolina and Rhode Island were ineligible to participate since they had not yet ratified the U.S. Constitution, and New York failed to appoint their allotment of electors in time because of a deadlock in their state legislature.〕 Gradually throughout the years, the states began conducting popular elections to help choose their slate of electors, resulting in the overall, nationwide indirect election system that it is today. Under the original system established by Article Two, electors could cast two votes to two different candidates for president. The candidate with the highest number of votes (provided it was a majority of the electoral votes) became the president, and the second-place candidate became the vice president. This presented a problem during the presidential election of 1800 when Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Thomas Jefferson and challenged Jefferson's election to the office. In the end, Jefferson was chosen as the president because of Alexander Hamilton's influence in the House of Representatives. This added to the deep rivalry between Burr and Hamilton which resulted in their famous 1804 duel. In response to the 1800 election, the 12th Amendment was passed, requiring electors to cast two distinct votes: one for President and another for Vice President. While this solved the problem at hand, it ultimately had the effect of lowering the prestige of the Vice Presidency, as the office was no longer for the leading challenger for the Presidency. The separate ballots for President and Vice President became something of a moot issue later in the 19th century when it became the norm for popular elections to determine a state's Electoral College delegation. Electors chosen this way are pledged to vote for a particular presidential and vice presidential candidate (offered by the same political party). So, while the Constitution says that the President and Vice President are chosen separately, in practice they are chosen together. The 12th Amendment also established rules when no candidate wins a majority vote in the Electoral College. In the presidential election of 1824, Andrew Jackson received a plurality, but not a majority, of electoral votes cast. The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, and John Quincy Adams was elected to the presidency. A deep rivalry was fermented between Andrew Jackson and House Speaker Henry Clay, who had also been a candidate in the election. Since 1824, aside from the occasional "faithless elector," the popular vote determines the winner of a presidential election by determining the electoral vote, as each state or district's popular vote determines its electoral college vote. Although the nationwide popular vote does not directly determine the winner of a presidential election, it does strongly correlate with who is the victor. In 52 of the 56 total elections held so far (about 93 percent), the winner of the national popular vote has also carried the Electoral College vote. The winners of the nationwide popular vote and the Electoral College vote differ only in close elections. In highly competitive elections, candidates focus on turning out their vote in the contested swing states critical to winning an electoral college majority, so they do not try to maximize their popular vote by real or fraudulent vote increases in one-party areas.〔https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282575990_The_Ten_Most_Competitive_American_Presidential_Elections〕 However, candidates can fail to get the most votes in the nationwide popular vote in a Presidential election and still win that election. In the 1824 election, Jackson won the popular vote, but no one received the majority of electoral votes. According to the 12th Amendment in the Constitution, the House of Representatives must choose the president out of the top 3 people in the election. Clay had come fourth, so he threw his support to Adams, who then won. Because Adams later named Clay his Secretary of State, Jackson's supporters claimed that Adams gained the presidency by making a deal with Clay. Charges of a "corrupt bargain" followed Adams through his term. Then in 1876, 1888 and 2000, the winner of electoral vote lost the popular vote outright. Numerous constitutional amendments have been submitted seeking to replace the Electoral College with a direct popular vote, but none has ever successfully passed both Houses of Congress. Another alternate proposal is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an interstate compact whereby individual participating states agree to allocate their electors based on the winner of the national popular vote instead of just their respective statewide results. The presidential election day was established on a Tuesday in the month of November because of the factors involved (weather, harvests and worship). When voters used to travel to the polls by horse, Tuesday was an ideal day because it allowed people to worship on Sunday, ride to their county seat on Monday, and vote on Tuesday–all before market day, Wednesday. The month of November also fit nicely between harvest time and harsh winter weather, which could be especially bad to people traveling by horse and buggy. Until 1937, presidents were not sworn in until March 4 because it took so long to count and report ballots, and because of the winner's logistical issues of moving to the capital. With better technology and the 20th Amendment being passed, presidential inaugurations were moved to noon on January 20–allowing presidents to start their duties sooner.〔 The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 was enacted to increase disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns. Subsequent amendments to law require that candidates to a federal office must file a Statement of Candidacy with the Federal Election Commission before they can receive contributions aggregating in excess of $5,000 or make expenditures aggregating in excess of $5,000. Thus, this began a trend of presidential candidates declaring their intentions to run as early as the Spring of the previous calendar year so they can start raising and spending the money needed for their nationwide campaign.〔 The first president, George Washington, was elected as an independent. Since the election of his successor, John Adams, in 1796, all winners of U.S. presidential elections have represented one of two major parties. Third parties have taken second place only twice, in 1860 and 1912. The last time a third (independent) candidate achieved significant success (although still finishing in third place) was in 1992. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States presidential election」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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