How federal elections work
Fifty-one separate election systems, one national date, and, for the presidency, a two-step in which the popular vote chooses electors and the electors choose the President.
There is no national election authority in the United States. States run federal elections under Article I's Elections ClauseState legislatures set the times, places, and manner of congressional elections, but Congress may override those rules by law at any time.Read the full definition (opens a new tab), Congress overrides where it chooses (the uniform November date, voting-rights law, the Electoral Count Reform ActThe 2022 law rewriting how Congress counts electoral votes: the Vice President's role is ministerial, and objections need one-fifth of each chamber.Read the full definition (opens a new tab)), and constitutional amendments set who cannot be barred from voting. Here is the full cycle, from filing to swearing-in, with the presidency's extra machinery included.
The constitutional calendar
Every even-numbered year, the entire House and one of the Senate's three staggered classes (about a third of seats) stand for election; every fourth year, the presidency joins them. The off-presidential years are the midterm electionThe federal election held at the midpoint of a presidential term: the whole House, about a third of the Senate, but no presidential race.Read the full definition (opens a new tab). Terms are fixed: no early elections, no snap dissolutions, whatever the politics.
The stagger is deliberate design: the House can turn over completely in one wave, the Senate can only turn over a third at a time, and a President faces voters exactly once per term.
Who can run, and who decides
The qualifications are short and closed: 25/7-years-citizen/state-inhabitant for the House, 30/9 for the Senate, 35/natural-born/14-years-resident for President. Neither Congress nor the states can add to them, states cannot term-limit their members of Congress (U.S. term limitsOnly the presidency is term-limited federally: two elected terms (Twenty-Second Amendment). Members of Congress can serve unlimited terms; states cannot change that.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) v. Thornton, 1995).
Only the presidency is term-limited, at two elected terms, by the Twenty-Second AmendmentThe 1951 amendment limiting a President to two elected terms, and to one if they served more than two years of someone else's.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) (1951). Congressional term limits would take a constitutional amendmentA formal change to the Constitution's text. Twenty-seven have been ratified. An amendment outranks every statute, regulation, and prior court decision.Read the full definition (opens a new tab).
Filing & campaign finance
ballot accessThe legal requirements to get a candidate's name printed on the ballot: filing deadlines, fees, and petition signatures set by each state.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) runs through state law: signatures, fees, deadlines, all different everywhere. Federal money rules are national: once a candidacy crosses $5,000 raised or spent, it registers with the Federal Election CommissionThe agency that administers and enforces federal campaign finance law. Six commissioners, no more than three from one party, so four votes are needed to act.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) and files public reports of every donor over $200 and every expenditure.
Those FEC filings are public by design, and they are exactly what powers this app's campaign-money lens.
Source: FEC, Registering as a candidate
Primaries & nomination
Each party's nominationThe President's formal proposal of a person for an office that requires Senate confirmation. The nominee holds no authority until confirmed and sworn in.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) is chosen in state-run primary electionThe state-run election in which each party's voters choose its nominee for the general election. Rules (open, closed, top-two) vary by state.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) (or caucuses), under rules that vary by state: closed to registered members, open to all, or restructured entirely (top-two and ranked systems). For the presidency, primaries allocate delegates to the national conventions, which formally nominate the ticket.
Primary electorates are smaller and more partisanBelonging to or acting on behalf of a political party. Bipartisan means both major parties; nonpartisan means the office or body is not organized by party at all.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) than November's, which is why safe-seat politics is often really primary politics.
Source: USA.gov, The election process
The general election
Congress fixed the date in 1845: the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. House and Senate races are decided directly, most by majorityMore than half. A plurality is only the largest share, which can be far less than half when more than two candidates run.Read the full definition (opens a new tab), a few states requiring runoffs for a majority. The presidential vote is really 51 separate contests (states plus D.C.) choosing slates of Electoral CollegeThe 538 state-appointed electors who formally elect the President. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes; all but two states award theirs winner-take-all.Read the full definition (opens a new tab).
Administration is local: countyThe main administrative subdivision of most states, running courts, jails, elections, property records, and often health and social services.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) officials run the polls, state law governs early and mail voting, and recounts follow state triggers and margins.
Source: USA.gov, How elections work
Canvass & certification
Election night totals are unofficial. In the days after, officials canvassThe official post-election accounting: reconciling ballots cast against voters checked in, resolving provisionals, and producing the final tallies.Read the full definition (opens a new tab): verify, reconcile, and total every polling placeThe location where voters in a precinct cast ballots in person on election day, staffed by trained poll workers and open to authorized observers.Read the full definition (opens a new tab)'s returns, resolve provisional ballots, and then certify the results as official. For president, the Electoral Count Reform ActThe 2022 law rewriting how Congress counts electoral votes: the Vice President's role is ministerial, and objections need one-fifth of each chamber.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) of 2022 put this on a fixed schedule with the state executive legally bound to certify the court-resolved outcome.
The Electoral College votes
Each state appoints electors equal to its congressional delegationAll the members of Congress from one state, taken together: its two senators and all of its representatives, of whichever parties.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) (D.C. gets three); 48 states award all of theirs to the statewide winner, Maine and Nebraska split by district. The electors meet in their own states in mid-December and cast separate ballots for President and Vice PresidentFirst in the line of succession, President of the Senate with a tie-breaking vote, and whatever else the President delegates. The job's power is almost entirely informal.Read the full definition (opens a new tab), which are sealed and sent to Congress.
Faithless-elector laws, upheld unanimously in Chiafalo v. Washington (2020), let states bind electors to their pledge.
Congress counts
The new Congress meets jointly to open and count the electoral certificates, with the Vice President presiding in a role the Electoral Count Reform Act now defines as purely ministerial. Objections require one-fifth of each chamberOne of the two houses of a legislature. Congress has two: the House of Representatives and the Senate. A bill must pass both, in identical text.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) to even be heard, and majorities of both to sustain. 270 of 538 wins; no majority, and the House picks the President by state delegation, one vote per state.
Terms begin
Congressional terms begin at noon on January 3, when the new Congress convenes, elects its leaders, and swears in its members. The presidential term begins at noon on January 20, with the 35-word oath the Constitution prescribes verbatim. Until those moments, the previous officeholders hold full power, that is the lame-duck period.
When seats open early
Death, resignation, or removal mid-term triggers different rules per office. House: special electionAn off-schedule election to fill a vacancy. House vacancies require one; Senate vacancies are usually filled by gubernatorial appointment until one is held.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) only, no appointments ever. Senate: in most states the governorA state's chief executive: proposes the budget, signs or vetoes bills, appoints agency heads and often judges, and commands the state National Guard.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) appoints a temporary senator until an election, per the Seventeenth AmendmentThe 1913 amendment providing for direct popular election of senators, who had previously been chosen by state legislatures.Read the full definition (opens a new tab). Presidency: the Vice President succeeds outright, and the Twenty-Fifth AmendmentThe 1967 amendment covering presidential succession, vice presidential vacancies, and how a President may be declared unable to serve.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) fills a VP vacancy by presidential nomination and majority advice and consentThe Senate's shared role in appointments and treaties: nominations need a Senate majority; treaties need two-thirds.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) of both chambers.
Source: U.S. Senate, Appointed Senators
- National Archives, The Electoral College
- USA.gov, How elections work
- U.S. Senate, About Electing & Appointing Senators
- FEC, Help for candidates
Stage-specific sources are cited on their stages above.