1 00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:09,600 Hello, I'm Suhasini Vincent, Associate Professor of Legal English 2 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:14,160 at the University of Paris 2, Panthéon Assas, and in this week's course, 3 00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:17,920 we shall study how presidential elections in the U.S. 4 00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:21,700 are held by looking at the different stages of a whole election year. 5 00:00:23,140 --> 00:00:25,620 Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. 6 00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:30,260 Constitution states that a candidate for the presidency has to be at 7 00:00:30,460 --> 00:00:35,200 least 35 years of age, be American-born, and have lived 8 00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:36,160 in the U.S. 9 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:38,440 for at least 14 years. 10 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:40,480 So elections in the U.S. 11 00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:45,340 are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. 12 00:00:46,340 --> 00:00:51,280 The last presidential election was held on 3rd November 2020. 13 00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:55,860 Presidential elections are held every four years, so the next 14 00:00:56,060 --> 00:01:00,540 presidential election will be held in November 2024. 15 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:05,980 Midterm elections are held near the midpoint of a president's four-year 16 00:01:06,180 --> 00:01:09,700 term of office, when all members of the House of Representatives, 17 00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:14,320 as well as one-third of ill senators, will seek re-election. 18 00:01:15,340 --> 00:01:19,060 Pursuant to the ratification of the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. 19 00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:23,920 Constitution in 1951, a president cannot serve more than 20 00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:24,880 two terms. 21 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:29,840 This amendment was passed due to the fact that Franklin D. 22 00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:36,080 Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms from 1933 to 1945, 23 00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:37,760 when he died in office. 24 00:01:38,700 --> 00:01:39,900 The president of the U.S. 25 00:01:40,100 --> 00:01:44,720 is not elected directly by the population, but by an electoral 26 00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:49,620 college who voters vote for a list of electors, who in turn will elect 27 00:01:49,820 --> 00:01:50,580 the president. 28 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:56,080 The Founding Fathers decided on this indirect mode of election 29 00:01:56,280 --> 00:01:59,660 to avoid the country being governed by a dictator. 30 00:02:00,580 --> 00:02:04,720 They did foresee the possibility of the president wielding his powers 31 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:08,880 and threatening the democratic nature of the American political 32 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:09,840 system. 33 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:14,080 They also considered the likelihood of people electing a president 34 00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:19,180 they did not know enough about, so the electoral college was intended 35 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:24,040 to act as a filter between the will of the people and the election 36 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:25,940 of the country's chief executive. 37 00:02:27,140 --> 00:02:28,140 In the U.S. 38 00:02:28,340 --> 00:02:32,580 two-party system, as always, the question is, will a Republican 39 00:02:32,780 --> 00:02:35,460 or a Democrat move into the White House? 40 00:02:36,360 --> 00:02:41,440 These two parties have to select their official nominee long before 41 00:02:41,640 --> 00:02:42,800 the November election. 42 00:02:43,740 --> 00:02:48,620 Therefore, each party organizes caucuses and primary elections. 43 00:02:49,780 --> 00:02:52,040 Now what are caucuses and primary elections? 44 00:02:52,780 --> 00:02:57,800 In caucuses, voters meet in private homes and other public buildings 45 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:00,680 to discuss the campaign and the different candidates. 46 00:03:01,480 --> 00:03:06,640 They then elect delegates to county conventions, who in turn elect 47 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:10,700 delegates for state conventions where the delegates for the national 48 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:12,120 convention are chosen. 49 00:03:13,460 --> 00:03:18,180 Primary elections are elections to decide which Democrat candidate 50 00:03:18,380 --> 00:03:23,280 will compete with which Republican candidate in the presidential election. 51 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:28,660 We can thus distinguish between three types of primary elections. 52 00:03:29,140 --> 00:03:33,260 In a closed primary, only voters who are registered 53 00:03:33,460 --> 00:03:38,140 as members of a specific party can take part in the selection process. 54 00:03:38,900 --> 00:03:43,940 Semi-closed primaries enable independent voters to take part 55 00:03:44,140 --> 00:03:48,680 in the selection of a party's candidate, while voters registered 56 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:52,460 with a particular party are restricted to that party's primary. 57 00:03:53,140 --> 00:03:59,160 Finally, only primaries allow voters, regardless of party affiliation, 58 00:03:59,580 --> 00:04:02,120 to vote in any of the primaries that they wish. 59 00:04:03,180 --> 00:04:08,320 Since 1988, many states organize their primaries simultaneously 60 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:09,800 on Super Tuesday. 61 00:04:10,660 --> 00:04:15,280 The next step is a national convention where all the delegates gather 62 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:17,560 and vote in favor of their candidate. 63 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:22,580 At the national convention, the newly elected official candidate 64 00:04:22,780 --> 00:04:28,200 of the party announces who his running mate or vice president will be. 65 00:04:28,400 --> 00:04:32,380 They form what is called the ticket, as in the Biden-Harris ticket. 66 00:04:33,380 --> 00:04:38,300 On election day, the presidential candidates are not voted for directly 67 00:04:38,500 --> 00:04:39,260 as U.S. 68 00:04:39,460 --> 00:04:43,520 citizens vote for an electoral college composed of electors who 69 00:04:43,720 --> 00:04:46,240 have pledged to vote for one of their candidates. 70 00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:51,300 So someone who wanted to vote for Biden to be president voted for 71 00:04:51,500 --> 00:04:53,380 an elector who also wanted Biden. 72 00:04:54,200 --> 00:04:59,680 Each state thus has a specific number of electors, which is equal 73 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:02,320 to the number of senators, that's two per state, 74 00:05:02,660 --> 00:05:06,360 and the number of representatives, which varies according to the 75 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:07,560 population of each state. 76 00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:12,780 This system of indirect election was designed to reflect the fact 77 00:05:12,980 --> 00:05:13,860 that the U.S. 78 00:05:14,060 --> 00:05:18,680 is not a unitary nation, but a confederation of sovereign 79 00:05:18,880 --> 00:05:23,460 states whose individual voices have to be taken into account when 80 00:05:23,660 --> 00:05:25,860 it's time to elect the country's president. 81 00:05:26,860 --> 00:05:30,760 Each state has a specific number of electors, equal to the number 82 00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:35,480 of senators, and the number of representatives, which varies according 83 00:05:35,680 --> 00:05:37,040 to the population of each state. 84 00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:42,600 In other words, the more populated a state is, the bigger its influence 85 00:05:42,800 --> 00:05:44,680 on the electoral college will be. 86 00:05:45,180 --> 00:05:48,420 California, the most populated state in the country, 87 00:05:48,940 --> 00:05:54,180 has 55 electors out of a total of 538, 88 00:05:54,620 --> 00:05:57,460 whereas Wyoming only has three. 89 00:05:58,060 --> 00:06:01,700 The presidential ticket, which wins the majority of citizens' 90 00:06:01,900 --> 00:06:06,520 vote in a state, wins all the electoral college votes for the state. 91 00:06:06,980 --> 00:06:10,240 This system is called the winner takes all. 92 00:06:10,800 --> 00:06:14,000 So let's assume a state has ten electors. 93 00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:18,380 Six of them are for the Democrat candidate and four for the Republican 94 00:06:18,580 --> 00:06:19,340 candidate. 95 00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:24,700 Here, the Democrat candidate wins the election in that state and 96 00:06:24,900 --> 00:06:28,180 gets the votes of all ten electors. 97 00:06:28,720 --> 00:06:33,960 The Republican candidate gets no votes and the winner takes it all. 98 00:06:34,500 --> 00:06:38,820 This winner take all system is used in 48 states. 99 00:06:39,260 --> 00:06:41,800 Only Nebraska and Maine have different rules. 100 00:06:42,860 --> 00:06:47,280 This electoral system has however been criticized by some today, 101 00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:51,720 who feel that the minority vote in each state is not taken into 102 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:55,100 consideration in the composition of the electoral college. 103 00:06:55,780 --> 00:06:58,660 So what's the magic number on election night? 104 00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:02,240 It's 270, and this is how it counts. 105 00:07:02,920 --> 00:07:09,120 The electoral college has 538 members, a number which corresponds to the 106 00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:14,980 435 representatives plus the 100 senators as well as three electors 107 00:07:15,180 --> 00:07:17,020 for Washington D.C. 108 00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:22,640 So the candidate to the presidency needs to obtain the votes of 270 109 00:07:22,840 --> 00:07:26,100 electors, just over 50 percent to be elected. 110 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:32,140 Some people are in favor of a system that follows a nationwide system 111 00:07:32,340 --> 00:07:36,740 of election as in France, where citizens vote directly and 112 00:07:36,940 --> 00:07:40,880 the candidate who obtains the largest number of votes is elected to office. 113 00:07:41,500 --> 00:07:46,400 It's interesting to note that since the 2016 election, several states 114 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:47,360 in the U.S. 115 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:51,620 have adopted laws that make sure that their electoral college votes 116 00:07:51,820 --> 00:07:53,960 go to the winner of the national vote. 117 00:07:54,620 --> 00:07:58,300 Furthermore, the Constitution in Article 2, Section 1, 118 00:07:58,500 --> 00:08:03,340 leaves it to the state's legislatures to decide on the manner in which 119 00:08:03,540 --> 00:08:04,740 electors are chosen. 120 00:08:05,580 --> 00:08:10,140 Electors are usually party members, activists or state officials, 121 00:08:10,620 --> 00:08:13,000 and are often unknown to the public. 122 00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:18,420 Former presidents, governors, senators cannot be members of the 123 00:08:18,620 --> 00:08:23,140 electoral college, thus respecting the notion of separation of powers. 124 00:08:26,740 --> 00:08:32,400 Until two people, the first candidate to obtain an overall majority of 125 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:36,540 votes was chosen as president and the candidate with the second best 126 00:08:36,740 --> 00:08:38,500 score became vice president. 127 00:08:39,180 --> 00:08:42,940 The president and the vice president could then belong to different parties, 128 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:48,020 as when Thomas Jefferson was chosen as vice president under John Adams' 129 00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:52,280 presidency between 1797 and 1801. 130 00:08:52,980 --> 00:08:57,460 In 1804, the 12th Amendment, however, modified the procedure. 131 00:08:58,080 --> 00:09:02,920 Since then, electors have voted for the president and vice president 132 00:09:03,120 --> 00:09:03,880 jointly. 133 00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:08,580 Since no federal law requires electors to vote, as they said they would, 134 00:09:09,040 --> 00:09:14,460 in a few instances, some faithless electors have chosen not to support 135 00:09:14,660 --> 00:09:18,140 their party's candidate, thus going against the popular 136 00:09:18,340 --> 00:09:19,360 vote of their state. 137 00:09:19,980 --> 00:09:24,680 For instance, in 1960, a Republican elector betrayed his 138 00:09:24,880 --> 00:09:26,520 party and supported a Democrat. 139 00:09:27,100 --> 00:09:30,460 He did not, however, give his vote to the Democrat 140 00:09:30,660 --> 00:09:32,000 candidate, John F. 141 00:09:32,200 --> 00:09:36,660 Kennedy, but rather to a Democratic senator who was not a candidate 142 00:09:36,860 --> 00:09:37,620 in the election. 143 00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:43,900 In 1976, another Republican elector voted for Reagan, who had lost 144 00:09:44,100 --> 00:09:47,220 his party's nomination, and not for Gerald Ford, 145 00:09:47,560 --> 00:09:49,360 the Republican candidate that year. 146 00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:54,940 During the 2020 election, in the case of a near tie at the 147 00:09:55,140 --> 00:09:59,020 Electoral College, the defection of a faithless elector could have 148 00:09:59,220 --> 00:10:04,240 serious consequences, as a Supreme Court intervened and 149 00:10:04,440 --> 00:10:09,020 in a July 2020 decision, namely, Shefalo A.L. 150 00:10:09,220 --> 00:10:09,980 V. 151 00:10:10,180 --> 00:10:14,640 Washington, the justices unanimously ruled that states have the right 152 00:10:14,840 --> 00:10:19,960 to force electors to vote for their party's nominee in order to avoid 153 00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:23,240 the probability of faithless electors. 154 00:10:23,580 --> 00:10:27,160 The winner is generally known the night of the popular vote, 155 00:10:27,360 --> 00:10:29,400 but this is not always the case. 156 00:10:30,040 --> 00:10:34,580 It is, if for whatever reason, the Electoral College cannot determine 157 00:10:34,780 --> 00:10:39,080 a winner, it is a task of the House of Representatives, following a 158 00:10:39,280 --> 00:10:43,480 specific procedure to choose a winner among the first three 159 00:10:43,680 --> 00:10:44,440 candidates. 160 00:10:45,340 --> 00:10:50,100 This has not occurred since the 1824 election. 161 00:10:50,780 --> 00:10:55,220 In such a scenario, the Senate is in charge of selecting the Vice 162 00:10:55,420 --> 00:10:59,480 President, so after the electors have been elected, it is already 163 00:10:59,680 --> 00:11:03,380 clear who will be President, but officially the President is 164 00:11:03,580 --> 00:11:07,720 elected later by the Electoral College on the first Monday, 165 00:11:07,960 --> 00:11:10,480 following the second Wednesday of December. 166 00:11:11,380 --> 00:11:14,460 However, these votes are counted at a still later date, 167 00:11:14,920 --> 00:11:18,400 so the last elections, the votes were counted only on 168 00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:22,700 the 6th of January 2021, and the results were officially 169 00:11:22,900 --> 00:11:24,180 announced in Congress. 170 00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:29,200 And on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden, the President-elect, 171 00:11:29,460 --> 00:11:34,400 was sworn in by Justice John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 172 00:11:34,660 --> 00:11:35,420 into office. 173 00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:41,320 So the US President's term began in January, and thus during an order.