The American elections witness two types of electoral delegates: the delegates of each party who choose its candidate to represent it in the primaries, and delegates who choose the president of the republic from among the candidates of the different parties.
Any American citizen who has the support of residents of the state in which he resides can become a delegate, and he is appointed by the party leadership in each state, and these are usually members of Congress, retired military personnel, or celebrities.
The delegates in the primaries
The Democratic and Republican parties hold their general election conferences during August with the aim of officially nominating the two parties ’candidates for the presidential race.
Every party conference witnesses the delegates' vote for the candidate who won the primaries, in an attempt to show unity and stand behind the winning candidate and to overcome the conflicts and divisions of the primaries stage. The elected delegates are obligated to vote, according to the data of the election results in the states they represent.
The party’s delegates from every US state participate in the party’s general conference, and it is up to the party’s leadership in the states to determine how delegates are chosen to participate in the party’s general conference.
Representatives of each state sit together next to each other at the party’s general conference, and carry banners with the name of the party’s candidate who enjoys their support, and each state’s delegation selects its candidate for the presidential elections officially.
And 4,051 delegates will participate in the Democratic Party’s conference this year, and Joe Biden needs the votes of 2,026 delegates to obtain the official nomination for the party, which has become certain after the withdrawal of all of his rivals, while 2,477 delegates will participate in the Republican Congress.
Delegates in the presidential elections
, American voters do not directly elect their president. Rather, the identity of the president is determined by an electoral body called the "Electoral College", and the body consists of 538 delegates.
Delegates are a group of citizens appointed by the states to vote to elect the president and vice president on behalf of all citizens in these states, so the Electoral College represents a model for indirectly conducting elections.
The process of selecting members of the Electoral College varies from state to state, and political parties usually nominate members of the Electoral College during party conferences or through voting in the party’s Central Committee.
According to the US Constitution, the winner in the presidential election is determined not by gathering the majority of votes in the national popular vote, but by securing the majority of the electoral votes allocated to the 50 states and the District of Columbia within the electoral college.
The winning candidate to enter the White House needs 270 votes (half +1) - at least - of the total votes of the assembly members.
The law determines for each state within the electoral college a certain number of votes according to its population and the number of representatives who represent it in Congress, and this number equals the number of members of Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, in addition to 3 members from the District of Columbia in which Washington is located.
For example, Texas has 38 delegates in the electoral college, Montana has only 3, and North Carolina has 15 delegates.
The election is conducted according to the rule that the state is considered a single electoral district, so the candidate who wins the majority of votes in it gets the votes of all the state representatives.
Nebraska and Maine do not follow this method and use the proportional system. If a candidate wins with half the number of votes, he gets only half the delegates.
In 2016, 10 of the 538 voters who cast their ballots voted for a candidate who did not win the popular vote in his state, an unusually high number.
Votes of delegates
The delegates meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, and this is the second phase of the elections, when all of them cast their votes from their respective mandates.
Then the results of the vote are presented to Congress, which in turn meets the House of Representatives and the Senate in January, to count the votes of delegates and announce the results of the presidential elections in the United States, days before the inauguration of the new president on January 20, 2021.