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US ELECTIONS: TRUMP OR HILLARY?
Who will (it be) Trump (or) Hillary?
The system of elections in the United States of America (US) which has a Presidential form of government is not a very easy one to understand- it has evolved over the years, with many conventions being followed and becoming the norm and the fact that the procedures followed for voting are not uniform across the US as a whole.
Throw in this a battle between Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and Secretary of State, and Donald Trump, real estate mogul with practically no political experience to mention, and one has a blockbuster of an election to look forward to this November.
US Presidential Election Process
Two parties- the Republicans and the Democrats- dominate the political process in the US. Barring a few exceptions, members of these 2 parties control the presidency, the Congress, the governorships and the state legislatures. Experts attribute the lack of many small parties in the US to the “first past the post” election system in America, which makes it difficult for small parties to win elections.
The first step in the run-up to US election season is the primaries or caucuses, conducted by all the states, in which voting takes place and these usually make it known beforehand as to who the nominee for presidency will be from the Republicans’ and Democrats’ side.
During the summer of the election year, the Republicans and Democrats each hold a national convention where they adopt a “platform” of policies and declare their nominees for president and vice-president. While national conventions are seen as mere ceremonial affairs nowadays, they are significant because they give each party a chance to promote its nominees and define its differences with the opposition.
There is an Electoral College that finally elects the President but to make the system democratic, it is the people who choose the members of the Electoral College. After the nationwide presidential election is held in November, the Electoral College meets in December (in most states, electors cast their votes based on how the majority of voters in their state voted), and vote in their states on December 15. The results are counted by the Congress in January. There are 538 electors and 270 electoral votes are needed to win the election.
US ELECTIONS: TRUMP OR HILLARY?
This time, Hillary Clinton has been nominated from the Democrats’ side while Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. The nomination process for the final candidature is an uphill task in itself, as was evident in the tooth and nail contest among many candidates, for instance, between Clinton and Bernie Sanders from the Democrats, and between Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and others on the Republican side. However, so far, these elections have fanned more rhetoric than possibly ever before.
On one hand, Hillary Clinton has been accused of playing the ‘woman’ card every now and then, and investigations into allegations that her emails handled strategic information callously when she was in the White House are on, while on the other hand, Donald Trump has been making news for questionable reasons too.
What started with mockery of his hairdo and outlandish statements soon escalated into alarm when support for Trump started swelling and the possibility of his election as the President of the US became more concrete.
Trump has made some very radical statements and suggested ‘solutions’ which seem rather unreasonable and impractical: banning the entry of Muslims into US until the country ‘figures out’ how to handle the threat of terrorism and violence, building a wall along the US-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration and so on.
If such suggestions were to be implemented, global economy is likely to suffer and the political and security risks would be heightened in the US, which is probably why, according to a study by reputed research firm the Economist Intelligence Unit, Donald Trump winning the election to US Presidency is one of the 10 global risks facing the world.
The main elections are still far but this time the US elections are causing more trepidation than ever before, especially in view of the trying times we are living in, the kinds of threats the world faces and the need to face it all together. Only time will tell whether Trump will trump Hillary or vice-versa…
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