Electing the President

With a high-stakes presidential election, several critical cases before the Supreme Court, and anti-voter laws on the rise across, 2024 is set to be a pivotal year for our democracy. Here are a few events we’re marking on our calendars as we gear up for the changes ahead.
 

When you vote for the President of the United States, you are not voting directly for a candidate. Instead, your vote — and the votes of everyone else in your state — directs the votes of the people who vote directly for President: presidential electors, otherwise known as members of the Electoral College.  

This blog, and those that will follow, will explain how the Electoral College works, the history of the Electoral College — including its racist origins — and why it must be abolished. 

Caucuses "are meetings run by political parties that are held at the county, district, or precinct level." In the months before a presidential election, several states hold caucuses where candidates vie for party support. Caucus participants then vote for the candidates they support; the number of votes each candidate receives determines how many party “delegates” will be sent to support that candidate at the party’s convention.

This story was originally published in The New York Times.

“It’s all very confusing for us, even as people who are elections people,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the chief executive of the League of Women Voters, which runs the voter information website Vote411.org.

Voters deserve to hear directly from the candidates campaigning to represent us at the highest level.

See which candidates have filled out our voter guides and demand the rest follow their example!

Three years ago, our nation's capital faced an unprecedented threat to our democracy that will be etched in the memory of our nation forever. 

This article was originally published in The Boston Globe.

Voters must cast ballots in the party they are registered for, and voters who are registered as undeclared may vote in either primary. In New Hampshire, roughly 40 percent of voters are registered as undeclared, according to Liz Tentarelli, the president of LWV New Hampshire.

Congress attached legislation to update how votes are counted and cast by the Electoral College to the omnibus appropriations bill that passed in the final days of the 117th Congress. 

Current bipartisan proposals would clarify existing ambiguities in the legislation around the role of the Vice President and the certification of electors and offer transparency around how electors are appointed. 

The League of Women Voters became a household name in the mid-twentieth century as the award-winning sponsor of the US’s first televised presidential debates. Why did that change, and will the League ever sponsor Presidential debates again?

The League joined a letter written by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights with 60 other organizations to urge the Senate to reform the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887 before the end of the year. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, S.4573, represents a significant advance forward to securing and protecting our democracy from future attacks on presidential elections.