In the United States, among all elected officials, it is the President who holds the chief executive office in the nation. Compared to other countries with parliamentary forms in which the office of the president is mainly ceremonial, the United States president is particularly vested with great authority and is considered the most powerful elected official worldwide. Initially, the founders of the American nation intended to restrict the presidency to a narrow institution. This was because they distrusted the executive authority as a result of their experience with colonial governors who had taught them that executive was inimical to liberty. This ideology was partly due to the fact that they felt betrayed by the actions of the King of Great Britain and Ireland, George III, and because they considered a strong executive to be incompatible with the republicanism that was embraced during the declaration of the United States independence in the year 1776 (McDonald, 2018) . However, electing of the United States president does not depend solely on voters. Thus, voting in the United States perhaps may not be considered at all to be democratic because it is not the person who wins by the majority of votes that win.
In the year 2000 when President George Washington Bush took over the office, it was not he who won by the highest number of votes but instead it was Al Gore. Accordingly, in four occasions of the American history in the year 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000, the winner in the presidential election in the United States received fewer votes than their opponents (McDonald, 2018) . These four instances thus go in contrary to popular belief by American citizens. In the U.S it is not the voters who elect the president (U.S Electoral College, 2016) . Voters merely indicate their preference for the president they want in office, although the actual task of electing a president is the duty of the 538 individual electors to the American Electoral College.
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In the United States, each State in the nation is assigned some electors to the Electoral College. However, the assigning of these electors primarily depends on each State’s delegation to the United States Congress. The country has a total of fifty states with each having two members in the U.S. Senate, thus totaling 100 senators. Moreover, the US House of Representatives has 435 members who are appointed by the state, and whose appointment to office is based on the population with each state having a minimum of one (Legal Information Institute) . If a state has the least population compared to others, for instance in the case of Wyoming and Alaska, then they are al lowed to send three members to Congress, that is two Senators and one representative. As such, the most populous states such as California send two senators and 53 representatives. Therefore, they have a total of 55 votes in the United States Electoral College. In short, all the 50 states in the country send a total of 535 members to the U.S Congress (U.S Electoral College, 2016) .
Additionally, the famous slogan in the U.S that is “taxation without representation means that the District of Columbia in Washington D.C. has the privilege of sending one non-voting member to the House of Representatives although they are not allowed to post any senators (Legal Information Institute) . However, in the Electoral College, Washington D.C. is accordingly afforded the same number of votes the same as those afforded to the states with the smallest states (three). Thus, the total number of votes in the Electoral College in 538 (U.S Electoral College, 2016) . Therefore to win the presidency in the United States for any candidate depends entirely on the majority of votes in the Electoral College, that is half plus one or a total of 270 votes and not on the majority of votes cast by the Amer ican Public. This is the main reason why we often hear about the magic number of 270 on any Election Day in the country (Legal Information Institute) .
If no candidate wins an absolute majority of the Electoral College, then the election of the president is decided by votes in the U.S. House of Representative. One such occurrence happened in the 1824 election (McDonald, 2018) . However, electors in the Electoral College usually are not members of the C ongress but rather are elected or appointed by voters or state legislators depending on the state.
Forty-eight states in the country in addition to the District of Columbia particularly have a winner take it all approach when it comes to their votes in the Electoral College. Meaning, in every Election Day, even if one candidate wins the popular vote in California by a single vote, he or she will win all of the 55 Electoral College votes of California (U.S Electoral College, 2016) . Therefore, it does not matter by how many votes the other presidential candidates win in each of the other states so long as they gain more votes those other candidates. The electing of the president does not require a majority of popular votes since the winner of the popular vote for each of the states by a plurality will win all the votes in the Electoral College. (U.S Electoral College, 2016)
However, two exceptions are made for the state of Maine and Nebraska who award some of their Electoral College votes by the U.S. Congressional district. For instance, Maine has two members to the House of Representatives and two senators, a total of four Electoral College votes (U.S Electoral College, 2016) . Therefore, one of the votes is primarily awarded to the presidential candidate that wins the most votes in each of the two congressional districts. Additionally, the two remaining senatorial votes are then allocated to the presidential candidate who wins by the majority of votes overall in the state (Legal Information Institute) . For example, this was why the former U.S president, Barrack Obama won a single vote from Nebraska since he won one of Nebraska’s three districts even though John McCain won the other two and the state.
Before any election day in the United States, the public often knows how most of the states will vote. For instance, in the recent election, for now, U.S president, Trump, people knew that the state of Alabama would vote for Trump beforehand, while Rhode Island was going to vote for Hillary Clinton. As such the American public knew the voting outcome of approximately forty states. Therefore, the presidential candidates primarily focused most of their campaigns on the remaining ten states whose outcome were less specifi c (McDonald, 2018) . The remaining states are the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, and Virginia. These swing states are the ones that receive the most attention from presidential candidates before any election day for they play a significant role in determining the outcome of the presidential election.
In short, in the U.S presidential election, any candidate do not aim to win the popular vote across the country, and consequently, are not seeking to win all the country's 50 states even though some such as Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 election almost came close to. Majorly, any presidential candidate mainly has an aim of winning the majority of votes in the Electoral College.
References
Legal Information Institute. (n.d.). U.S. Constitution: Article II. Retrieved from Legal Information Institute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
McDonald, M. L. (2018, December 10). Presidency of the United States of America. Retrieved December 2018, from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/presidency-of-the-United-States-of-America#ref231542
U.S Electoral College. (2016). Presidential Election Laws. Retrieved from U.S Electoral College: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/provisions.html
