That is republished as a part of a sequence in collaboration with the Headway Election Problem. Chalkbeat and Headway at The New York Occasions will ask younger folks to share their insights and views all through the 2024 presidential election.
This story was initially revealed by Chalkbeat. Join their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
All through 2024, Headway and Chalkbeat, a nonprofit information group centered on schooling in America, have been in dialog with youngsters in regards to the upcoming presidential election.
We’ve requested these youngsters some large questions: How are you partaking with the election? Why are you engaged, or why not? What points matter to you? To date, we’ve heard from a broad vary of scholars, from self-described political junkies to these extra hesitant or uninvolved. In complete, we’ve exchanged messages with practically 1,500 college students nationwide.
With every questionnaire, we additionally invited college students to ask us their very own questions in regards to the election. Right here’s a synthesis of what we’ve heard from them.
What are the candidates’ insurance policies?
The 2 main candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, have very completely different information and plans. Maggie Astor, a New York Occasions reporter protecting the election, contacted each candidates’ campaigns and reviewed a whole bunch of interviews, statements, coverage papers, payments, and company actions to construct a information to every candidate’s key insurance policies.
The information outlines each Trump’s and Harris’ stances on main points like abortion, local weather change, crime, democracy, the economic system, overseas coverage, immigration, and the Israel-Gaza battle. Test it out right here, and save the hyperlink, as extra subjects might be added within the coming weeks.
How does the electoral course of work?
Whereas the specifics of what occurs throughout an election cycle might fluctuate, the general electoral course of — the steps candidates, campaigns, and voters take to organize for and take part in Election Day — tends to observe a set order.
First, people fascinated by working for president formally declare their candidacy. Campaigning can start years earlier than Election Day. These candidates, who aren’t but official nominees of any political occasion, marketing campaign by holding city halls and rallies, competing at debates and doing interviews with information shops. Finally, the method results in the primaries and caucuses, the place voters choose their most well-liked occasion’s nominee. These primaries and caucuses happen on the state degree, with every state having its personal schedule and guidelines.
4 years in the past, Occasions journalists Sarah Almukhtar, Matt Flegenheimer, Umi Syam, and Eden Weingart created a information to assist readers navigate the intricacies of the 2020 presidential election’s primaries and caucuses. Their definitions stay related at the moment:
Primaries are moderately simple: Voters vote, and their votes go to candidates who hope to obtain extra votes than the opposite candidates.
Caucuses are like this in spirit, however with a touch of municipal sausage-making and D.M.V.-style chaos.
Typically, supporters for numerous candidates sit or stand collectively in teams. A head rely is carried out. And if a candidate doesn’t attain a sure threshold of help — say, 15 % of attendees at a caucus website — the group is deemed “nonviable,” and its members realign with different clusters earlier than a last rely is made.
After the votes from the primaries and caucuses are tallied, every occasion coalesces across the successful candidate. Subsequent, the candidates announce their vice-presidential working mates. Lastly, the candidates head to their respective occasion’s nationwide conference, the place they’re formally nominated by the occasion’s state delegates.
The conventions themselves are multi-day occasions filled with speeches and shows, practically all centered on telling the story of the marketing campaign to a nationwide viewers. Greater than 200,000 phrases had been spoken at this yr’s Democratic Nationwide Conference and Republican Nationwide Conference mixed. The Occasions reporter Jonathan Corum analyzed all these phrases, which you may examine right here.
As Election Day approaches, the presidential candidates proceed to influence voters via extra debates, speeches, rallies, and media interviews. In lots of states, eligible voters can vote early.
On this yr’s election, early voting has already begun in lots of states, and voter registration deadlines have begun to go in some. Right here’s a full information to the important thing dates in every state. (We additionally acquired numerous questions on how outcomes are counted, which you’ll be able to examine right here.)
As soon as voting concludes, the ballots are counted in every state. That is the place the Electoral Faculty comes into play. In nearly each state, the candidate who wins essentially the most votes secures the entire state’s electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska allocate a few of their electoral votes by congressional district). There are 538 complete electoral votes, and the candidate who earns not less than 270 is said president-elect. The president-elect formally takes workplace at midday on Inauguration Day, which is normally on Jan. 20.
Why will we nonetheless use the Electoral Faculty?
The Electoral Faculty was a transparent level of confusion for youngsters. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received the favored vote however nonetheless misplaced the election to Donald Trump as a result of she misplaced the Electoral Faculty. Youngsters puzzled why this technique stays part of our electoral course of.
In 2022, The New York Occasions revealed a complete information to the Electoral Faculty. On this information, the Occasions fellow Allyson Waller defined that though a majority of the general public helps the Electoral Faculty’s abolition, it stays politically contentious “since Republicans at present profit from the electoral clout of much less populous, rural states.”
She continues:
In 2020, Gallup reported that 61 % of People supported abolishing the Electoral Faculty in favor of the favored vote. Nonetheless, that help diverges extensively primarily based on political events, with help from 89 % of Democrats and solely 23 % of Republicans.
One path to altering the system can be a constitutional modification, which might require two-thirds approval from each the Home and Senate and ratification by the states, or a constitutional conference referred to as by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
Some hope to scale back the Electoral Faculty’s significance with out an modification. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, which collectively management 195 electoral votes, have signed on to an interstate compact wherein they pledge to grant their votes to the winner of the nationwide common vote. The native legal guidelines would take impact solely as soon as the compact has sufficient states to complete 270 electoral votes.
If you wish to dive deeper into what pretend electors are, what number of electoral votes it takes to win, or if there may ever be a tie, you may learn extra right here.
For this yr’s election, Occasions journalists Lily Boyce, Jon Huang, and Blacki Migliozzi created an interactive that lets you recreation out how Harris or Trump may attain 270 electoral votes, relying on which swing states they win. You possibly can play that right here.
How do polls work, and may we belief them?
Many youngsters had questions on polls. Occasions reporter Kaleigh Rogers broke down how election polling works right here. When you’re quick on time, she additionally explains it in a video. Right here’s the gist:
The golden rule: By no means put an excessive amount of inventory in a single ballot. Keep in mind that polls are a snapshot of how folks had been feeling at a selected second in time; they’re topic to error and are finest understood in mixture, equivalent to via New York Occasions polling averages.
However once you do need to perceive extra a few single ballot, take into account the so-called P.S.T. No, not Pacific Customary Time — check out the pollster that carried out the ballot, the pattern inhabitants surveyed, and the time-frame wherein it was carried out.
Now that you just’ve been launched to the significance of contemplating a survey’s pollster, pattern, and timeframe, you may learn Rogers’ clarification for every of those phrases in clear, easy-to-understand element right here.
How can I inform if the data I’m consuming is correct and unbiased?
In 2022, Occasions know-how reporter Tiffany Hsu explored how academics are serving to college students navigate a media panorama affected by misinformation. The article touched on quite a few methods that academics and college students can make use of to enhance their skill to seek out verified information and mitigate bias.
A New York Occasions Opinion article about misinformation by Charlie Warzel — later integrated right into a lesson plan from The New York Occasions Studying Community — argued that consuming correct and unbiased info requires going past a single supply. One instructor encourages college students to recollect the acronym SIFT:
1. Shigh.
2. Investigate the supply.
3. Find higher protection.
4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the unique context.
Yow will discover extra assets right here within the lesson plan from The New York Occasions Studying Community.
How are election outcomes counted?
There are two essential kinds of ballots counted throughout an election: in-person ballots forged at polling stations on Election Day, and absentee or mail-in ballots, which voters submit both by mail or by hand earlier than Election Day.
For in-person voting on or earlier than Election Day, voters go to designated polling locations and fill out ballots.
Absentee or mail-in ballots, which on this election are beginning to exit, are rising in popularity amongst voters. There are state-specific guidelines for when they need to be returned — you may see your state’s deadlines for registration and voting right here.
On the shut of voting on Election Day, all ballots are despatched to state authorities for official counting. Every state has established procedures for processing in-person, absentee, and mail-in ballots. In any case votes are tallied and licensed, the state’s total end result determines which candidate receives its electoral votes. As soon as a candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, she or he wins the presidency. The outcomes are then formally despatched to Congress, concluding the election course of.
In 2024, for the second presidential election in a row, we might not know the winner till days after Election Day. A type of causes is the rise in reputation of mail-in voting. In an article about mail-in poll delays, Occasions reporter Nick Corasaniti explains why:
Counting mail ballots takes extra time as a result of there are extra steps concerned. Quite a lot of safety measures, together with signature verification and guaranteeing that voters didn’t additionally attempt to vote in particular person, are required. Election officers should open the ballots and flatten them earlier than they are often put in a tabulator to be counted.
Corasaniti provides: “If a winner shouldn’t be declared on election evening, it is not going to essentially level to failures within the course of. Extra probably, it will likely be a results of the extreme safety measures required for counting mail-in ballots.”
In 2020, it took two weeks earlier than each state was referred to as. New York Occasions reporters Alicia Parlapiano and Lazaro Gamio defined how and why that occurred right here.
Beginning on election evening, you may observe together with The New York Occasions as we course of the 2024 election outcomes reported by every state.
How do candidates finance their campaigns?
Candidates finance their campaigns via a mixture of donations from people, joint fundraising committees, political motion committees (PACs), and tremendous PACs. Every of those fundraising mechanisms has its personal guidelines and contribution limits. Candidates might also lend private funds on to their campaigns. They’ll additionally obtain giant donations from rich people and organizations via tremendous PACs, which might increase and spend limitless quantities of cash so long as they don’t coordinate immediately with the candidate.
In 2023, Occasions journalists Molly Prepare dinner Escobar, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Sensible, and Christine Zhang examined the sources of funding for the 2024 presidential candidates. Though the article was revealed earlier than Trump secured the Republican nomination and Harris grew to become the Democratic presidential nominee after President Biden’s withdrawal, it gives a transparent clarification of how campaigns are financed.
What’s the position of overseas interference on this election?
In line with U.S. officers, Russia, Iran, and China have all engaged in disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and affect operations focusing on U.S. elections. These efforts are an try to undermine public confidence within the U.S. electoral course of, create discord, and sway public opinion. Within the article “Crunchtime for Election Interference: October Is the Month of Mischief,” Occasions reporters David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes report that U.S. officers establish Russia as essentially the most energetic risk, adopted by Iran and China. To counter these efforts, U.S. officers have ramped up measures to guard election programs, particularly towards hacking and misinformation.
The eventualities that fear American officers are legion. Whereas the precise balloting processes getting used on Nov. 5 appear safer than in earlier elections — 97 % of votes forged will contain some type of paper backup that makes recounts way more dependable — federal officers have been war-gaming the likelihood that registration programs change into locked up, maybe in what might initially appear like the sort of ransomware assaults which have closed down metropolis providers in Baltimore or Atlanta, or hit the Seattle airport.
However why are overseas brokers interfering? Jen Easterly, the top of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, advised Sanger and Barnes that these brokers have frequent objectives.
“The 2 essential objectives are to undermine American confidence within the safety of our election and our democratic establishments and to sow partisan discord,” she mentioned in an interview. “These are the 2 objectives of all our overseas adversaries.”
You possibly can learn extra about this challenge right here.
What’s the significance of swing states on this election?
The importance of essentially the most aggressive states in any shut presidential election is monumental. Appropriately named, swing states are states with shut polling and sufficient Electoral Faculty votes to swing the election to at least one candidate or one other. Swing states are once more the primary focus this yr as Harris and Trump are primarily tied within the polls.
Polls recommend that the presidential contest this yr hinges on the ends in seven states particularly: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. To discover how every of those states might affect the election, examine this swing state tracker from Occasions journalists Lily Boyce, Lazaro Gamio, Eli Murray, and Alicia Parlapiano.
Why are third-party candidates no more outstanding?
Third-party candidates face vital challenges in gaining nationwide traction within the winner-take-all system of U.S. politics, though some are aggressive in state and native races. Restrictive poll entry legal guidelines, authorized opposition from main events, and considerations about vote-splitting restrict their affect. In an article headlined “Democrats Put together Aggressive Counter to Third-Social gathering Threats,” Occasions reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien touched on third-party candidates. She wrote:
Getting access to the presidential poll is a sophisticated and costly course of for candidates, significantly for these not affiliated with a celebration, even a minor one. Legal guidelines fluctuate from state to state, with some requiring merely a price or a couple of thousand signatures, and others requiring tens of hundreds of signatures gathered beneath tight deadline stress, together with different administrative hurdles.
State guidelines limiting poll entry “make sure that the people who find themselves on the poll have respectable bases of help, and it’s not merely an arrogance mission,” mentioned Robert Lenhard, a Democratic Social gathering lawyer who co-led an effort to combat towards third-party candidates.
Impartial candidates and third-party management see restrictive poll legal guidelines, and efforts to observe and implement them, as anti-democratic, exemplifying the sort of two-party political machinations they are saying they’re making an attempt to fight.
“What are poll entry obstacles? They’re obstacles towards free speech,” mentioned Ralph Nader, who has made 4 third-party runs for president. He described state poll legal guidelines in america as “the worst within the Western world, by orders of magnitude.”
Efforts to reform the system, equivalent to switching to proportional illustration, face political and structural challenges. Occasions journalists Alyce McFadden, Taylor Robinson, Leanne Abraham, and Rebecca Davis O’Brien are monitoring the place third-party candidates are on the poll right here.
For a snapshot of third-party involvement in U.S. presidential elections, Darcy Eveleigh wrote a quick historical past in 2016 for The Upshot, detailing main third-party candidates and their eventual outcomes. And in case you’re weighing a vote for a third-party candidate by yourself poll, the Ethicist column in The New York Occasions Journal supplied some concerns right here.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit information website protecting academic change in public faculties.
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