well hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now we've been going through unit 5 of the ap government curriculum and in this video that means it's time to talk about how we elect the president so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked electoral college style well then let's get to it so in this video here's what we're trying to do explain how the different processes work in a u.s presidential election and explain how the electoral college facilitates and or impedes democracy i hope you can already taste the sauce because it is spicy and to be clear even though what i'm about to tell you is pretty complex i'm leaving a bunch of stuff out it's even more complex than what i'm about to say but this is what you need to know for your exams let's start with the process of electing the president if someone's going to run for president they first have to earn their party's nomination and this happens through primary election and primaries are elections in which members of a party vote on which candidate they want to represent them in the general election which is the actual election where a president is chosen now these primary elections happen state by state and when you know it different states handle primaries in different ways some states hold open primaries which means that any registered voter can vote in either party's primary but not both so for example here in my fair state of georgia we hold open primaries so if i show up to the polls on primary election day the poll worker is going to ask me whether i want a ballot for the republican primaries or the democratic primaries and i can tell them whichever one i want that's the idea of an open primary but in other states like new york for example they hold closed primaries that means that only people registered with the party can vote in those primaries so to sum up here in georgia if i want to vote in the primary they asked hey are you a registered voter and then in new york they're going to ask me are you registered with the party and to further confuse you some states don't use primaries but instead hold caucuses in order to nominate their party's candidate now a caucus is in principle no different than a primary it's people voting on their chosen nominee for the party the only difference is that instead of using secret ballots to cast their vote voters at a caucus discuss and debate together and then they vote publicly so in this first step party members vote on their chosen candidate and whoever wins that primary is presented as such at the party's national convention which is just a big party for the you know party they present the winning candidate and their choice for vice president and that's the beginning of the general election where each party's chosen candidates run against each other to become president okay now what i just said you know both parties putting forward candidates to run for president is true only in some years remember that a president can serve only two four-year terms so if a president has done that then both parties will choose their candidate however if a president has only served one term then the party usually keeps the sitting president as their nominee so for example barack obama was the president for four years starting in 2008 and after that he was still the democratic party's nominee for president in 2012. donald trump won the election in 2016 and so he was the party's nominee in 2020 as well so if a sitting president is running again that candidate is known as the incumbent and truth be told the incumbent almost always has the advantage over the challenger a phenomenon known as the incumbency advantage the first and most obvious advantage the incumbent has is that he has already won an election so he knows how it's done or in the future maybe she will know how it's done the second advantage is that the incumbent is a known quantity which is to say people already know how they're going to act as president the third advantage is that the incumbent already has an army of volunteers and fundraisers ready to help with another campaign and while this advantage is certainly helpful it does not guarantee a victory so with all that done we finally come to election day which is always the first tuesday in november everyone goes to the polls and votes for the candidate that they think will be the best president except kind of not really so yes we all go out and vote and on our ballots are the candidates names but we are not actually voting for those candidates because here in america the people don't actually elect the president to which i say what all right now i get to tell you about the electoral college which is the constitutional mechanism by which we elect the president the framers of the constitution weren't too keen on participatory democracy especially when it came to electing the president so they devised a system that would insulate the ignorant mob of voters from the election of the president and that system is called the electoral college and here's how it works each state has the same number of electors as they have congressional representatives so here in georgia we have 14 representatives in the house and two senators so we have 16 electors that cast their vote for president but don't hate me we actually have 32 electors and here's why our state chooses 16 electors for the democratic candidate and 16 electors for the republican candidate so when i go to the polls to vote i'm not actually voting for the candidate i'm voting for that candidate slate of electors who will then vote that candidate into office now in almost every state whichever candidate wins the state it's a winner take all system for electoral votes so in my state if the republican candidate wins all 16 electoral votes go to that candidate however you do need to know that in maine and nebraska they have rules which allow them to split the electoral votes but in every other state it's a winner-take-all system it is possible for an elector to vote against the popular vote and if they do they are called faithless electors now that almost never happens and some states even have laws against it but it has happened now and then now in order to win the election the candidate has to receive a minimum of 270 electoral votes and whatever candidate does becomes the president okay now the last thing i'll say about the electoral college is this it is as a system uh contention every four years when we have a presidential election the debate over the electoral college returns like the instinctive flocking of the salmon of capistrano for example in the 2000 presidential election al gore the democratic nominee won about half a million more popular votes than the republican candidate george w bush so let me say that again half a million more people voted for the democratic candidate than the republican candidate but bush ended up winning more electoral votes and through a highly contested outcome that ultimately had to be decided by the supreme court he defeated gore now the same thing happened in 2016 hillary clinton won more of the popular vote than donald trump but trump won the election with a majority in the electoral college so in light of that you may be wondering why in the world do we do it this way well proponents of the electoral college argue that this system requires candidates to campaign in many more places throughout america rather than just focusing on a few highly populated states and cities but the detractors of the electoral college would say that while that's true in theory the system actually only requires candidates to spend time in a handful of swing states if you don't know swing states are those states which can really go either way on voting day even so the electoral college is the system we've been given in the constitution and short of a constitutional amendment it's the system we'll have in the future as well and that is how we elect a president 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