Congratulations America. We can all go back to believing you are the country of dreams and prosperity now.

[Via Friendly Atheist]

Read President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech

With the news the Barack Obama has won the Democratic presidential nomination I decided I needed to find out how the US election actually works.

It seems there are many many other people, Americans included who want to know, but it can be hard to find simplified information. Americans appear to be too angry with the way the system works (and rightly so) to give a simplified answer and instead go into a rant about how it doesn’t matter how it’s supposed to work because it just doesn’t happen.

From what I can gather in the simplest terms…

1. In the lead up to a presidential election a Caucus or a Primary is held in each of the States and these can be run in a number of different ways (which I won’t go into).
2. The Caucuses and Primaries decide the delegates that will vote on who the final candidate will be for each Party (the Democrats and the Republicans).
3. The number of delegates for each State are assigned in a way that represents the population of the State, so a more populated State has more delegates.
4. Then the delegates for each party vote for who they want to be their presidential candidate and the one with the most votes carries on and campaigns for the presidency.

Once the voting is done in November the winning party for each State will take the delegates they have (according to the population of the State) and the delegates then vote again for their party candidate.

The party with the most votes win. This party is not always the most popular with the public.
A good example of this is the 2000 election where George Bush won with 271 electoral votes against 266, but only 47.9% of the popular vote against 48.4%.

I have found a good blog about what can happen after an election and how the other party can gain much of the control through the Senate and House of Representatives, elections for these are held every 6 and 2 years respectively. Have a look at The American Government made simple by Jenna Spataro [unfortunately this web page has been removed].

Hopefully this clears some stuff up for all of those like me who didn’t have a clue. I have even less faith in the US elections now I know how they are run, o dear.