Election Time!
The U.S. presidential election is coming up on November 8th. Our system of choosing members of Congress ((国会in Japan) is different, but I wanted to write a little about how presidential elections work in America, since Japan does not elect a president.
For a man or woman to become president, they must win the election by winning states – not by winning the total vote. Each state is worth a different number of votes, based on population (so states with more people, like California or Texas, get more votes).
The numbers mean the number of votes that each state gets. There are 538 total.Since different numbers of people vote in different states, it is possible for one person to win even though they got less of the total vote in the country. In 2000, George Bush got 47.9% of the vote and Al Gore got 48.4%, but Bush won because he won states that had more points.
Bush got 271 votes, Gore got 266.It’s kind of a crazy system, but it’s the one we have used for over two hundred years.