That is republished as a part of a collection in collaboration with the Headway Election Problem. Chalkbeat and Headway at The New York Instances will ask younger individuals to share their insights and views all through the 2024 presidential election.
All through 2024, Headway and Chalkbeat, a nonprofit information group centered on schooling in America, have been in dialog with youngsters concerning the upcoming presidential election.
We’ve requested these youngsters some massive questions: How are you participating with the election? Why are you engaged, or why not? What points matter to you? Up to now, we’ve heard from a broad vary of scholars, from self-described political junkies to these extra hesitant or uninvolved. In complete, we’ve exchanged messages with almost 1,500 college students nationwide.
With every questionnaire, we additionally invited college students to ask us their very own questions concerning the election. Right here’s a synthesis of what we’ve heard from them.
What are the candidates’ insurance policies?
The 2 main candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, have very totally different information and plans. Maggie Astor, a New York Instances reporter protecting the election, contacted each candidates’ campaigns and reviewed a whole lot of interviews, statements, coverage papers, payments, and company actions to construct a information to every candidate’s key insurance policies.
The information outlines each Trump’s and Harris’ stances on main points like abortion, local weather change, crime, democracy, the economic system, international coverage, immigration, and the Israel-Gaza battle. Test it out right here, and save the hyperlink, as extra subjects will likely be added within the coming weeks.
How does the electoral course of work?
Whereas the specifics of what occurs throughout an election cycle could differ, the general electoral course of — the steps candidates, campaigns, and voters take to arrange for and take part in Election Day — tends to observe a set order.
First, people eager about working for president formally declare their candidacy. Campaigning can start years earlier than Election Day. These candidates, who aren’t but official nominees of any political occasion, marketing campaign by holding city halls and rallies, competing at debates and doing interviews with information shops. Finally, the method results in the primaries and caucuses, the place voters choose their most popular occasion’s nominee. These primaries and caucuses happen on the state stage, with every state having its personal schedule and guidelines.
4 years in the past, Instances journalists Sarah Almukhtar, Matt Flegenheimer, Umi Syam, and Eden Weingart created a information to assist readers navigate the intricacies of the 2020 presidential election’s primaries and caucuses. Their definitions stay related at this time:
Primaries are moderately simple: Voters vote, and their votes go to candidates who hope to obtain extra votes than the opposite candidates.
Caucuses are like this in spirit, however with a splash of municipal sausage-making and D.M.V.-style chaos.
Usually, supporters for numerous candidates sit or stand collectively in teams. A head depend is performed. And if a candidate doesn’t attain a sure threshold of assist — say, 15 % of attendees at a caucus website — the group is deemed “nonviable,” and its members realign with different clusters earlier than a remaining depend is made.
After the votes from the primaries and caucuses are tallied, every occasion coalesces across the profitable candidate. Subsequent, the candidates announce their vice-presidential working mates. Lastly, the candidates head to their respective occasion’s nationwide conference, the place they’re formally nominated by the occasion’s state delegates.
The conventions themselves are multi-day occasions stuffed with speeches and displays, almost all centered on telling the story of the marketing campaign to a nationwide viewers. Greater than 200,000 phrases have been spoken at this 12 months’s Democratic Nationwide Conference and Republican Nationwide Conference mixed. The Instances reporter Jonathan Corum analyzed all these phrases, which you possibly can verify right here.
As Election Day approaches, the presidential candidates proceed to influence voters by way of extra debates, speeches, rallies, and media interviews. In lots of states, eligible voters can vote early.
On this 12 months’s election, early voting has already begun in lots of states, and voter registration deadlines have begun to cross in some. Right here’s a full information to the important thing dates in every state. (We additionally acquired quite a lot of questions on how outcomes are counted, which you’ll examine right here.)
As soon as voting concludes, the ballots are counted in every state. That is the place the Electoral Faculty comes into play. In nearly each state, the candidate who wins probably the most votes secures all the state’s electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska allocate a few of their electoral votes by congressional district). There are 538 complete electoral votes, and the candidate who earns not less than 270 is asserted president-elect. The president-elect formally takes workplace at midday on Inauguration Day, which is normally on Jan. 20.
Why will we nonetheless use the Electoral Faculty?
The Electoral Faculty was a transparent level of confusion for youngsters. In 2016, Hillary Clinton gained the favored vote however nonetheless misplaced the election to Donald Trump as a result of she misplaced the Electoral Faculty. Youngsters puzzled why this technique stays part of our electoral course of.
In 2022, The New York Instances printed a complete information to the Electoral Faculty. On this information, the Instances fellow Allyson Waller defined that though a majority of the general public helps the Electoral Faculty’s abolition, it stays politically contentious “since Republicans presently profit from the electoral clout of much less populous, rural states.”
She continues:
In 2020, Gallup reported that 61 % of Individuals supported abolishing the Electoral Faculty in favor of the favored vote. Nonetheless, that assist diverges broadly based mostly on political events, with assist from 89 % of Democrats and solely 23 % of Republicans.
One path to altering the system can be a constitutional modification, which might require two-thirds approval from each the Home and Senate and ratification by the states, or a constitutional conference referred to as by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
Some hope to cut back the Electoral Faculty’s significance with out an modification. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, which collectively management 195 electoral votes, have signed on to an interstate compact wherein they pledge to grant their votes to the winner of the nationwide in style vote. The native legal guidelines would take impact solely as soon as the compact has sufficient states to complete 270 electoral votes.
If you wish to dive deeper into what faux electors are, what number of electoral votes it takes to win, or if there may ever be a tie, you possibly can learn extra right here.
For this 12 months’s election, Instances journalists Lily Boyce, Jon Huang, and Blacki Migliozzi created an interactive that means that you can sport out how Harris or Trump may attain 270 electoral votes, relying on which swing states they win. You possibly can play that right here.
How do polls work, and may we belief them?
Many youngsters had questions on polls. Instances reporter Kaleigh Rogers broke down how election polling works right here. In case you’re brief on time, she additionally explains it in a video. Right here’s the gist:
The golden rule: By no means put an excessive amount of inventory in a single ballot. Keep in mind that polls are a snapshot of how individuals have been feeling at a selected second in time; they’re topic to error and are finest understood in mixture, akin to by way of New York Instances polling averages.
However once you do wish to perceive extra a couple of single ballot, take into account the so-called P.S.T. No, not Pacific Normal Time — check out the pollster that performed the ballot, the pattern inhabitants surveyed, and the timeframe wherein it was performed.
Now that you just’ve been launched to the significance of contemplating a survey’s pollster, pattern, and timeframe, you possibly can learn Rogers’ rationalization for every of those phrases in clear, easy-to-understand element right here.
How can I inform if the knowledge I’m consuming is correct and unbiased?
In 2022, Instances expertise reporter Tiffany Hsu explored how lecturers are serving to college students navigate a media panorama suffering from misinformation. The article touched on various methods that lecturers and college students can make use of to enhance their potential to search out verified information and mitigate bias.
A New York Instances Opinion article about misinformation by Charlie Warzel — later included right into a lesson plan from The New York Instances Studying Community — argued that consuming correct and unbiased data requires going past a single supply. One trainer encourages college students to recollect the acronym SIFT:
1. Sprime.
2. Investigate the supply.
3. Find higher protection.
4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the unique context.
You could find extra sources right here within the lesson plan from The New York Instances Studying Community.
How are election outcomes counted?
There are two major sorts of ballots counted throughout an election: in-person ballots solid at polling stations on Election Day, and absentee or mail-in ballots, which voters submit both by mail or by hand earlier than Election Day.
For in-person voting on or earlier than Election Day, voters go to designated polling locations and fill out ballots.
Absentee or mail-in ballots, which on this election are beginning to exit, are rising in popularity amongst voters. There are state-specific guidelines for when they need to be returned — you possibly can see your state’s deadlines for registration and voting right here.
On the shut of voting on Election Day, all ballots are despatched to state authorities for official counting. Every state has established procedures for processing in-person, absentee, and mail-in ballots. In any case votes are tallied and authorized, the state’s general end result determines which candidate receives its electoral votes. As soon as a candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, she or he wins the presidency. The outcomes are then formally despatched to Congress, concluding the election course of.
In 2024, for the second presidential election in a row, we could not know the winner till days after Election Day. A type of causes is the rise in reputation of mail-in voting. In an article about mail-in poll delays, Instances reporter Nick Corasaniti explains why:
Counting mail ballots takes extra time as a result of there are extra steps concerned. A wide range of safety measures, together with signature verification and guaranteeing that voters didn’t additionally attempt to vote in individual, are required. Election officers should open the ballots and flatten them earlier than they are often put in a tabulator to be counted.
Corasaniti provides: “If a winner just isn’t declared on election night time, it is not going to essentially level to failures within the course of. Extra probably, it is going to be a results of the extraordinary safety measures required for counting mail-in ballots.”
In 2020, it took two weeks earlier than each state was referred to as. New York Instances reporters Alicia Parlapiano and Lazaro Gamio defined how and why that occurred right here.
Beginning on election night time, you possibly can observe together with The New York Instances as we course of the 2024 election outcomes reported by every state.
How do candidates finance their campaigns?
Candidates finance their campaigns by way of a mix of donations from people, joint fundraising committees, political motion committees (PACs), and tremendous PACs. Every of those fundraising mechanisms has its personal guidelines and contribution limits. Candidates may lend private funds on to their campaigns. They’ll additionally obtain giant donations from rich people and organizations by way of tremendous PACs, which might increase and spend limitless quantities of cash so long as they don’t coordinate straight with the candidate.
In 2023, Instances journalists Molly Cook dinner Escobar, Rachel Shorey, Charlie Good, and Christine Zhang examined the sources of funding for the 2024 presidential candidates. Though the article was printed earlier than Trump secured the Republican nomination and Harris turned the Democratic presidential nominee after President Biden’s withdrawal, it gives a transparent rationalization of how campaigns are financed.
What’s the function of international interference on this election?
Based on U.S. officers, Russia, Iran, and China have all engaged in disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and affect operations focusing on U.S. elections. These efforts are an try to undermine public confidence within the U.S. electoral course of, create discord, and sway public opinion. Within the article “Crunchtime for Election Interference: October Is the Month of Mischief,” Instances reporters David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes report that U.S. officers determine Russia as probably the most energetic risk, adopted by Iran and China. To counter these efforts, U.S. officers have ramped up measures to guard election techniques, particularly in opposition to hacking and misinformation.
The situations that fear American officers are legion. Whereas the precise balloting processes getting used on Nov. 5 appear safer than in earlier elections — 97 % of votes solid will contain some type of paper backup that makes recounts much more dependable — federal officers have been war-gaming the chance that registration techniques grow to be locked up, maybe in what could initially appear like the type of ransomware assaults which have closed down metropolis companies in Baltimore or Atlanta, or hit the Seattle airport.
However why are international brokers interfering? Jen Easterly, the pinnacle of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, advised Sanger and Barnes that these brokers have frequent targets.
“The 2 major targets are to undermine American confidence within the safety of our election and our democratic establishments and to sow partisan discord,” she stated in an interview. “These are the 2 targets of all our international adversaries.”
You possibly can learn extra about this situation right here.
What’s the significance of swing states on this election?
The importance of probably the most aggressive states in any shut presidential election is monumental. Appropriately named, swing states are states with shut polling and sufficient Electoral Faculty votes to swing the election to 1 candidate or one other. Swing states are once more the principle focus this 12 months as Harris and Trump are primarily tied within the polls.
Polls recommend that the presidential contest this 12 months hinges on the ends in seven states specifically: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. To discover how every of those states could affect the election, verify this swing state tracker from Instances journalists Lily Boyce, Lazaro Gamio, Eli Murray, and Alicia Parlapiano.
Why are third-party candidates no more outstanding?
Third-party candidates face important challenges in gaining nationwide traction within the winner-take-all system of U.S. politics, though some are aggressive in state and native races. Restrictive poll entry legal guidelines, authorized opposition from main events, and considerations about vote-splitting restrict their affect. In an article headlined “Democrats Put together Aggressive Counter to Third-Occasion Threats,” Instances reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien touched on third-party candidates. She wrote:
Having access to the presidential poll is an advanced and costly course of for candidates, notably for these not affiliated with a celebration, even a minor one. Legal guidelines differ from state to state, with some requiring merely a payment or just a few thousand signatures, and others requiring tens of hundreds of signatures gathered below tight deadline strain, together with different administrative hurdles.
State guidelines limiting poll entry “be certain that the people who find themselves on the poll have reliable bases of assist, and it’s not merely a conceit venture,” stated Robert Lenhard, a Democratic Occasion lawyer who co-led an effort to battle in opposition to third-party candidates.
Impartial candidates and third-party management see restrictive poll legal guidelines, and efforts to watch and implement them, as anti-democratic, exemplifying the type of two-party political machinations they are saying they’re making an attempt to fight.
“What are poll entry boundaries? They’re boundaries in opposition to free speech,” stated Ralph Nader, who has made 4 third-party runs for president. He described state poll legal guidelines in the USA as “the worst within the Western world, by orders of magnitude.”
Efforts to reform the system, akin to switching to proportional illustration, face political and structural challenges. Instances journalists Alyce McFadden, Taylor Robinson, Leanne Abraham, and Rebecca Davis O’Brien are monitoring the place third-party candidates are on the poll right here.
For a snapshot of third-party involvement in U.S. presidential elections, Darcy Eveleigh wrote a short historical past in 2016 for The Upshot, detailing main third-party candidates and their eventual outcomes. And should you’re weighing a vote for a third-party candidate by yourself poll, the Ethicist column in The New York Instances Journal supplied some concerns right here.
What different election-related questions do you’ve got? Inform us right here.
In case you have any questions, e mail DearHeadway@nytimes.com .
