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The Presidential Election Day Falls

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The Presidential Election Day falls on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November every four years in the United States. However, when Election Day is over the people are not who have done the electing. In the United States, citizens elect the president not by a popular vote but through the Electoral College. The Electoral College is comprised of five hundred fifty-three electors. There is one elector for every state senator and every member of the House of Representatives per state as well as three electors from Washington, DC. (Khan 2014) The political parties choose the electors. Most of the United States has adopted the winner-take-all system; this means the candidate who has fifty-one percent or more of the votes then …show more content…

The president-elect takes the oath of office and is sworn in as president of the US on January 20 in the year after the election. (Office of Federal Register 2014)
As a citizen of the United States we go to the polls and vote for the electors of the candidate we want as president…or do we? (Office of Federal Register 2014) Four times in the history of elections in the United States has a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election due to the electoral vote. The first time was in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, however because in the four-person election no one won a majority of fifty percent in the electoral college, this allowed the House of Representatives to chose the winner…choosing John Quincy Adams who came in second behind Jackson in both votes. The second time it happen was in 1876, when Samuel J. Tilden won fifty-one percent of the popular vote and Rutherford B. Hayes only won forty-eight percent, the electoral college vote was 184-185, and a special electoral commission picked Hayes over Tilden. The third time was in 1888, when Benjamin Harrison won the election over Grover Cleveland with 233 electoral votes even though he had the lower popular vote. The fourth and most resent time was in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the Electoral College so won the presidency. Another discrepancy that has happen is the electors whom are supposed to vote in agreement with

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