Presidential Election Glossary of Terms
Certificate of Ascertainment – This is a document that each state is required to prepare according to federal law. It must provide the names of all the presidential electors who won, but also the names and vote totals for each presidential elector who received any votes.
Checks and Balances – Giving power to politicians is always risky, so the U.S. Constitution has lots of protections—called checks and balances. These include vetoes, impeachment, “advice and consent,” and the Electoral College. It limits (“checks”) how much power any one state or region can have, which promotes political balance. It also keeps presidents from being in charge of presidential elections by keeping a lot of the power in the states.
Congressional District Method – This is how Maine and Nebraska choose their presidential electors. They elect one from each congressional district and the remaining two statewide.
Contingent Election – To be elected president or vice president requires winning a “majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.” If no candidate for president has enough votes (which last happened in 1824), the U.S. House of Representatives elects the president, with each state delegation having one vote, from among the top three candidates. If no candidate for vice president has enough votes, the U.S. Senate elects the vice president from among the top two candidates.
Electoral College – The multi-step democratic process used to elect the president and vice president, established by the U.S. Constitution in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment.
Electoral Count Act – The federal law that sets forth the process for presidential elections, filling in details about how the process works. It last amended in 2022 by the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act.
Electoral Vote – The votes cast by a presidential elector, one for president and one for vice president. For example, Maryland, one of the original states, has a record of all its presidential electors and their votes.
General Election – When the people, in each state, choose their state’s presidential electors. When people talk about the “presidential election,” that’s usually shorthand for this step in the process. In 2024, the general election is on November 5th (or, with so much early voting and voting by mail, you might say it ends on that day).
Inauguration – This is the day when the president and vice president are sworn in and their four-year terms begin. Ever since ratification of the Twentieth Amendment, the date has been fixed at January 20th.
Independent Candidate – A candidate who is not the nominee of a political party.
National Convention – A political party’s meeting of delegates from around the country where they formally nominate their candidates for president and vice president (although the Democrats did it differently in 2024), and conduct a lot of other business as well. Ballotpedia has a lot of information about recent national conventions.
Parliamentary System – The political system used in many other countries, like Canada, Great Britain, and Japan, where the executive is elected by the legislature. Like the Electoral College, this is a two-step democratic process.
Political Party – A group of people who come together around common ideas and candidates. Major political parties are organized from the ground up, starting with precincts (here are Democrat and Republican examples), with organizations at the county, state, and national levels. In the United States, the two major parties are national coalitions—very large and diverse groups of people who are trying to elect candidates at all levels of government.
President of the Senate – This is one of the jobs of the vice president, according to the U.S. Constitution, and it includes opening each state’s certificate of ascertainment during the joint session of Congress that counts the electoral votes and officially determines who won.
Presidential Elector – A person elected within his or her state to cast the state’s electoral votes, one for president and one for vice president.
Presidential Elector Nominee – A person nominated by a political party so that if that party wins the general election, the person will become one of the state’s presidential electors.
Primary Election – Usually an election to choose a political party’s nominee. In the presidential election process, parties mostly hold primary elections to choose state delegates to their national convention, who will ultimately vote to choose the party’s nominees for president and vice president.
Reapportionment – The process of dividing up seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the states. The U.S. Constitution, requires a census—a count of people—every ten years. This is used to redistribute seats in the U.S. House of Representatives based on population changes. Because each state gets as many presidential electors as it has members of Congress (the House plus the Senate), this reapportionment changes how many electoral votes each state will have for the next ten years.
Separation of Powers – Dividing up government power to prevent abuses. The first draft of the Constitution had a parliamentary system, where Congress would have elected the president, but that was rejected in favor of a greater separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
State Convention – A political party’s state meeting, where (in presidential election years) it elects delegates to the national convention and nominates presidential electors, as well as adopting a state party platform and conducting other business.
Winner-take-all Method – The way 48 states choose presidential electors, by electing them altogether based on the statewide popular vote result. Most states have used this system for more than a century.