If I were asked to describe the United States' elections, here are the words I would choose: unique, brutal, powerful, intriguing, audacious, undemocratic and convoluted. And I mean every word, and will explain why. I assure the reader that, coming to the end of the article, she or he will be convinced — as I am — that the US elections are all of the above. It may be too early to speculate on who will be the next president of the United States. But campaigning has started in full swing, thanks to Hillary Clinton, who submitted her candidacy in April. Clinton seems confident of winning her party's nomination, though this is also too early to predict. As for the Republicans, two televised debates have been held, on 6 August and 16 September, and Donald Trump came out as the frontrunner, with over 30 per cent of the vote. The US electoral process is no doubt a very complex and unique one, unmatched in any other country. The final say for the presidential election is ascribed to an electoral college of merely 538 politicians, the total number of senators and representatives in Congress. Given that 321 million people live in the US, this basically means that approximately one and a half persons represent every million people in the elections. Critique of the elections as a non-democratic process is getting louder. Over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress over the last century to either reform or eliminate the Electoral College altogether. None has passed the Congress threshold of two thirds of the votes to be presented to the states for ratification. States with both small and large populations alike are convinced that the system serves them well and gives them a say in the presidential elections. The method of electing the president through the Electoral College was a compromise solution for the two originally suggested options of either direct suffrage, or suffrage by Congress. The first choice was rejected out of hand by the majority of the so-called Founding Fathers. They felt that the people could not be trusted with such a crucial decision as electing a president. Their aim was to exclude the poor, the uneducated and African Americans, as well as women, from the electoral process. To maintain white supremacy, African Americans were not given full voting rights until 1964, when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Even after African Americans had gained their freedom, including the right to vote, under the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution following the Civil War, they were prevented from exercising this right because many states circumvented federal law and effectively barred African Americans from going to the polls by imposing preconditions, such as a poll tax and educational credentials. The idea of the US Congress electing the president was also quickly ruled out for violating the principle of separation of powers and the checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers, of which they were proud. They had then to resort, in all objectivity and with great prudence, to the compromise enshrined in Article 2 of the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers were convinced of the necessity of creating a body of voters, wealthier and better educated than the average person, whose sole purpose was to elect the president. Each state gets a number of voters equal to its representatives in the House of Representatives (the principle of proportionality), plus two for each state, the number of their representatives in the Senate (the principle of equality). Despite the fact that Washington is not represented in Congress, it was given three electoral votes under the 22nd Amendment. The number of total electors today is 538, counting the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 members of the Senate, and three voters in addition for the capital, Washington (Columbia County). The American elections are held on two separate levels and the voting days have been fixed since the establishment of the nation. For the popular vote, it is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, while the vote of the Electoral College takes place at the state levels starting the first week of December. These dates were carefully chosen by the Founding Fathers. For the November popular vote, it was picked after the harvest season and prior to the winter season. Tuesday was to give voters sufficient time to reach their destination on horseback after Sunday prayers. As for the December electoral vote, it gives the states enough time to cast their votes before the president of the House of Representatives announces the name of the president-elect on 6 January. A few presidential hopefuls have celebrated victories immediately after the November popular elections only to be disappointed when they lost the Electoral College vote, and the entire presidency. The latest example of this contradiction in the electoral system was the outcome of the Bush-versus-Gore election in 2000. After having won the majority in the direct ballot, receiving more than George W Bush by over half a million votes, Gore lost the general election. Al Gore lost Florida to George W Bush by a little more than 500 votes. In accordance with the prevailing rule, “winner takes all”, Gore lost the 27 electoral votes allotted to Florida. Bush got the 271 majority of the Electoral College, while Al Gore received 267 electoral votes. A candidate needs 270 (269 + 1) of the Electoral College votes to win the general election. The “winner-takes-all” rule is the peak of intricacies in the US presidential elections. It is up to each state to choose its voting system. Currently, all states, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, vote according to “winner takes all.” This is the irony in the election of US presidents. All these rules are fixed. They are written in stone, needing a two-thirds majority in Congress to change, and a three-quarters majority of the states to then ratify — an apparently near-impossible threshold to attain. I have addressed all these complexities to allow the reader to contextualise the so-called democratic elections of a US president. Moreover, until recently all the deals were done by party bosses in backrooms, behind the scenes. This led people to take a stand against this regime and call for more transparency, because of their desire to take an active part in the political process in order to elect the candidate of their choice. The pre-election primaries were a novelty introduced in the 1960s to engage the people in presidential elections, if only in appearance. Many candidates continue to believe that their first allegiance should go to their largest contributors, namely corporations in the field of medicine, electronics, armaments and other industries, and hence become less concerned with people's basic needs. The two Obama campaigns partly attempted to break this tradition as they predominantly depended in their financing on small, everyday donors and many donations were made online. Hillary Clinton, to undercut the growing popularity of seemingly her only rival in the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, has attempted to dissociate herself from the elites of the party and project herself as a progressive granddaughter of a factory worker and daughter of a small entrepreneur, as someone who likes to get things done. She was sincere in calling to revitalise the shrinking middle class that once made America great. It is clear that Bernie Sanders, who loves to label himself a social democrat, has succeeded in injecting fresh blood into the Democratic campaign by striving to move the party away from the centre. This was sufficient reason to make Hillary Clinton change gear and alter her tone in the first Democratic debate, held on 15 October. It may be too early to say there is a new trend in the Democratic Party mainstream. But this will materialise sooner rather than later, if the party wants to rally new voters from minority groups and respond to demographic changes in the United States. So far, it seems that the 2016 elections are being led by outsiders who want to challenge the two-party mainstream. Donald Trump, a well-known American tycoon, is leading the Republican nominees and the two debates have not weakened him. He appears to have his own purpose. Trump has already announced his ability to buy politicians, of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and did not exclude Hillary Clinton or any of the Republicans who stood beside him on the platform in the debates. Nevertheless, it appears that the Republican lords do not trust Trump nor vie for him, as the bulk of the fundraising continues to go to Jeb Bush. It is interesting, though, to observe the different opposing trends between the candidates within and between the two parties. Where is the US heading to in the next presidential elections? Is the US ready for a Republican outsider who is capable of mobilising the white and elderly population while showing little care for women and minorities and their concerns? Is the US set for a social democrat who does not shy away from reverting back to the role of big government and Roosevelt-style New Deal policies? A social democrat who tries to get closer to the people and further away from the Electoral College system? Or a strong woman who ardently believes that this is her chance to grab power, and consequently shifts from one position to the next in her effort to rally voters? Finally, will a black horse appear on the horizon? A candidate who will try to combine these extreme and conflicting positions? A candidate capable of finding the lowest common denominator that would satisfy both the people and the party lords, whose interests are not necessarily compatible? It is still too early to tell. The writer is a professor of practice and director of the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for American Studies and Research at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo.
