The next big election in the United States will occur on November 7, 2000. Thousands of candidates across the
country will be running for everything from president of the United States to county clerk. In the process we will
all see millions of TV ads and bumper stickers, read and hear thousands of news stories, and may even get to meet
some of the candidates as they make public appearances. Election season is American democracy at its best!
Have you ever wondered what is going on behind the scenes in all of these political campaigns? For example,
why does someone run for office? Once they make that decision, how do they get their names on the ballot?
What does a typical candidate go through on the campaign trail? Who makes all the TV commercials and where
does the money come from to air them?
In this edition of How Stuff Works we will answer all of these questions
by following the campaign of a real candidate - Andy Brack. Brack is running for
the United States House of Representatives in the first congressional district of South Carolina.
In the process of following his campaign, you will get to
see everything involved in running for office,
and you will be amazed!
Why do we have elections?
Let's start at the beginning with a basic question - Why do we have elections?
The constitution of the United States
sets the country up as a representative democracy.
It does this very simply with one sentence in Article 1, section 2:
"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year
by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall
have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch
of the State Legislature."
This sentence says that the states will decide who can vote, and if you can vote in your state you
can vote for your representative in the House of Representatives. In the United States, anyone
over the age of 18 can vote if he/she is not a convicted felon. [Fun fact - if you look
at the second article of the constitution
you will find that, originally, voters did not choose the members of the Senate - the state legislators did!
The 17th amendment changed the Senate's election process over to the same model used for the House.]
Voting in the U.S. occurs through the process of an election. The states decide how elections will take place,
but they generally follow the same pattern and for national elections all of the voting occurs on the same day -
the first Tuesday in the month of November.
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