Obama won again!!!: Voting for president in the USA.

"4 more years", Barack Obama on Twitter

Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, citizens of the USA vote to elect their president for the next four years. It is a different system from that of Spain. To start with, it is a two-party system, that is, there are only two possible options, the Republican or the Democrat candidate who have been chosen on prior elections within their own parties (primaries). Another important difference is the fact that there is not a list of people who can vote, so they have to register to be able to vote.

In the USA, there is an indirect election, that is, people vote to a candidate in a state and the candidate who wins there gets all the votes for the Electoral College for that state.  It is important to win in those states that are most populated because you get a higher number of electors. The Electoral College has 538 electors of which the new president must obtain 270.

At the moment of writing, Barack Obama, the first Afro-American president of the USA, has been reelected with 303, but he may win some more. (You can see the actual data in real time in the widget on top of the side bar for the next few days).

What do you think of this voting system?

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