2020 United States Presidential Election (LOTF RP)

2020 United States presidential election

November 3, 2020
538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win
Nominee TBD TBD Party Democratic Republican Home state TBD TBD
Incumbent President Rick Tawney Republican

The 2020 United States presidential election is the 59th quadrennial presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Incumbent President, Rick Tawney is not seeking election to a full-term after taking office in December of 2019 in the wake of the resignation of President Arnold Wolf. Subsequently, the Republican and Democratic Primaries in both parties have been incredibly competitive. This marks the third election since World War II where an incumbent President or incumbent Vice-President did not seek the Presidency, after 2008 and 2016.

Background

Procedure

Article Two of the United States Constitution states that for a person to serve as president, the individual must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and have been a United States resident for at least 14 years. Candidates for the presidency typically seek the nomination of one of the various political parties of the United States. Each party develops a method (such as a primary election) to choose the candidate the party deems best suited to run for the position. The primary elections are usually indirect elections where voters cast ballots for a slate of party delegates pledged to a particular candidate. The party's delegates then officially nominate a candidate to run on the party's behalf. The presidential nominee typically chooses a vice presidential running mate to form that party's ticket, which is then ratified by the delegates at the party's convention (with the exception of the Libertarian Party, which nominates its vice-presidential candidate by delegate vote regardless of the presidential nominee's preference). The general election in November is also an indirect election, in which voters cast ballots for a slate of members of the Electoral College; these electors then directly elect the president and vice president. If no candidate receives the minimum 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, the United States House of Representatives will select the president from the three candidates who received the most electoral votes, and the United States Senate will select the vice president from the candidates who received the two highest totals. The election will occur simultaneously alongside elections for the House of Representatives, Senate, and various state and local-level elections.

The Maine Legislature passed a bill in August 2019 adopting ranked-choice voting (RCV) both for presidential primaries and for the general election. The Governor of Maine allowed the bill to become law without her signature, which delayed it from taking effect until after the 2020 Democratic primary in March, but made Maine the first state to use RCV for a presidential general election. The Maine Republican Party filed signatures for a veto referendum and preclude the use of RCV for the 2020 election, but the Maine Secretary of State found there were insufficient valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. A challenge in Maine Superior Court was successful for the Maine Republican Party, but the Maine Supreme Judicial Court stayed the ruling pending appeal on September 8, 2020. Nevertheless, ballots began being printed later that day without the veto referendum and including RCV for the presidential election, and the Court ruled in favor of the Secretary of State on September 22, allowing RCV to be used. An emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on October 6. Implementation of RCV could potentially delay the projection of the winner(s) of Maine's electoral votes for days after election day and may complicate interpretation of the national popular vote. The law continues the use of the congressional district method for the allocation of Maine's electors (Nebraska is the only other state that apportions its electoral votes this way).

On December 14, 2020, pledged electors for each candidate, known collectively as the United States Electoral College, will gather in their state's capital to cast their official ballot. The ballots are sent to Congress to be opened and officially counted pursuant to the processes laid out by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The newly elected Congress will meet in joint session to open, count, and certify the ballots on January 6, 2021, with the sitting vice president (in his role as president of the Senate) presiding over the session.

Simultaneous elections

Further Information: 2020 United States Senate Elections and 2020 United States House of Representatives Elections

Nominations

Democratic Party nomination

Primaries

In August 2018, the Democratic National Committee voted to disallow superdelegates from voting on the first ballot of the nominating process, beginning with the 2020 election. This required a candidate to win a majority of pledged delegates from the assorted primary elections in order to win the party's nomination. The last time this did not occur was the nomination of Adlai Stevenson II at the 1952 Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, six states used ranked-choice voting in the primaries: Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Wyoming for all voters; and Iowa and Nevada for absentee voters.

After Diane Clifford's loss in the previous election, the Democratic Party was seen largely as leaderless, and was also seen as fractured between the centrist Clifford wing and the more progressive Baginski wing of the party, echoing the rift brought up in the 2016 primary election. In 2018, several U.S. House districts that Democrats hoped to gain from the Republican majority had contentious primary elections. Politico described these clashes as a "Democratic civil war". During this period, there was a general shift to the left in regards to college tuition, healthcare, and immigration among Democrats in the Senate.