Trump effect: A margin of majority | The Manila Times

TORONTO — Election night in the United States has always been an exciting watch, but because one arrives at the critical juncture, you either see jubilation or sullen faces, crying and a lot of commiserating on what happened. When you ride through battleground states on election night, you feel the pulse of a tight race, hoping that staying in line would produce the needed numbers. But then again, there is the Electoral College, provided under Article 2 Section 1 of the United States Constitution and that defines the nature of electoral competition. That and the 50 state constitutions define the variances because one can predict like polls, but certainly, in states where you register on the day of elections, it would be defined by the campaigns' Get Out The Votes (GOTV) operations. There are three major modes of voting — in person on Election Day, in person before Election Day, and by mail/absentee. In this election cycle, almost 50 percent availed of the last two methods.

Those two account for the differences, as well as the Electoral College, which is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years during the presidential election for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president. The number of electoral votes exercised by each state is equal to that state's congressional delegation, which is the number of senators (two) plus the number of representatives for that state. It is a unique system set up by the Founding Fathers in the US for electing the president and vice president.