楊長華專訪 - The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce

Chewing the FatAmerica (sort of) VotesThe United States will vote on November 6 this year,to choose the president, all 435 congressionalrepresentatives and 33 of the 100 senators. However,while the congressional and senate elections will(largely) be decided on that day, the actual presidentialelection will be held December 17.That is the first day when each of the states’ electoralcollege delegates meet to cast their votes. The resultsmust be delivered to the President of the Senate andother designated officials by December 26. Under theconstitution, no person may be elected president (or,vice president) by way of a direct popular vote. It’s muchtoo important, and so hand-picked delegates arecharged with delivering each state’s votes to Washington.Every four years, there’s much talk about changingthe system, but little real enthusiasm. More attention ispaid to where extra electoral (state) votes may be won,in what are called the swing or battleground states. Infact, there are 37 of them.In recent years, only eight states voted for thecandidate that eventually won the election, and theytogether comprise just 84 of the 538 electoral collegevotes, or 15.6%. A further 50 votes (9.3%) are historicallysafe for Republicans and 32 (5.9%) are highly likely tovote for the Democrats.Electoral votes are allocated according to the numberof congress and senates seats, with each state havingtwo senators and a number of congressionalrepresentatives based on its population. So, each has aminimum of three votes, but California, the mostpopulous state, has 55. Other major players are Texas(38), New York (31), Florida (29), Illinois andPennsylvania (20 each) and Ohio (18).If a candidate won all of the big states, he (or she)would have just over 77% of the 270 votes needed towin. It is possible to win with just 11 states, but thediversity of the country suggests that strategy isn’t likelyto work out well.The Bulletin 工 商 月 刊 September 2012 31