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| - The American presidential election takes places every four years on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, as spelled out in the US Constitution. This year it will fall on November 3. Here is a primer on the US election system: The vote, by universal suffrage, is conducted in a single round in all 50 states and the District of Columbia (the city of Washington, which is not part of any state). Residents of the five US territories including Puerto Rico are eligible to vote in congressional elections and presidential primaries, but not in the presidential election. Voters choose among the candidates for president and vice president. The popular vote in each state determines the selection of a set of members of the Electoral College, who pledge to support a given candidate. The US presidential race is not determined directly by the popular vote, but by a majority of the Electoral College, a group of officials with the task of choosing the president. There are 538 members of the Electoral College, with the number from each state determined by its population size. A state has one elector for each of its members of the House of Representatives, and one for each of the state's two senators. The District of Columbia has three electors. California, the most populous state, thus has the largest number of electors (55), while Texas has 38, and New York and Florida have 29 each. At the other end of the spectrum, lightly populated Alaska, Delaware, Vermont and Wyoming have the minimum of three electors each. Members of the Electoral College officially elect the president and vice president in December, the month after the election, in what is a mere formality. The successful candidate must amass 270 electoral votes, an absolute majority of the 538 electors. In all but two states, the candidate who carries the majority of the popular vote wins the support of all the state's electors. Nebraska and Maine use a split system, in which two electors are chosen by popular state-wide vote and the remainder are chosen according to the popular vote in each congressional district. The winner-take-all system in the states makes it extremely hard for third-party candidates to prevail, although they can still have critical impacts on certain states -- and therefore on the national result. Some states historically support the Democratic candidate election after election, while others are just as resolutely Republican. Candidates thus concentrate their efforts on about a dozen states prone to shift back and forth between the parties, often determining the final result. The most important of these are the "battleground" or "swing" states with the largest number of electors, like Florida (29), Pennsylvania (20) and Ohio (18). Americans are also voting for every one of the 435 members of the House of Representatives (who serve two-year terms) and, this year, for 35 of the 100 senators (who serve for six years). They are choosing governors in 11 states and two territories, and casting votes in a multitude of referenda and local elections for positions including judges, sheriffs, state treasurers and county executives. This year's election is being contested under extraordinary circumstances, namely a coronavirus pandemic that has essentially shut down in-person campaigning and prompted states to implement social distancing guidelines at polling stations. Fears of spreading and contracting the virus have sparked tremendous interest in mail-in voting as a way to avoid the risks associated with large crowds at polling places. Rules vary by state, but absentee or vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked or received by Election Day. bd-mlm/bbk
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