American election 2020
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held nominally on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Trump became the first U.S. president since 1992 and the eleventh incumbent in the country’s history to fail to win re-election to a second term. The election saw the highest voter turnout since 1900,with Biden and Trump each receiving more than 70 million votes, surpassing Barack Obama’s record of 69.5 million votes from 2008. With more than 79 million votes and counting, Biden received the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election. The votes of the Electoral College for president and vice president are scheduled to be formally cast by the presidential electors on December 14, 2020, and officially counted by Congress on January 6, 2021.
The electoral process of USA
which includes the selection of candidates, the registration of voters, and the voting procedures–varies throughout the United States. Each state has the power to establish some of its own laws regarding voter requirements and the frequency of statewide elections. However, because the national government establishes federal election requirements, many of the states generally adopt the same rules and practices to reduce expenses and avoid the complexity of having two different systems.
Selecting the Candidates
Political parties, which are made up of groups of voters who share similar political views, or philosophies, are an important feature of the American political system. Although there are a variety of minor political parties, there are two major ones — the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Democrats and Republicans nominate most of the candidates who run for public office in the United States. In most elections, each major party selects a candidate and supports him or her with money, advice, and publicity. Political campaigns increasingly use direct-mail fliers and television advertisements to present the candidates’positions to the electorate. In other words, campaigns let the electorate know how the candidates “stand on the issues.” Because it is expensive to run a campaign, minor parties and independent candidates with smaller funds find it difficult to compete against the major party candidates for votes.
Qualifications Necessary to Run for Office
Although they need not belong to a political party, candidates must meet certain minimum requirements to run for various offices. For example, according to the U.S. Constitution, to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives a candidate must have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, be a resident of the state (and usually the district) he or she will represent, and be at least 25 years old. To serve in the U.S. Senate, a candidate must have been a U.S. citizen for at least nine years, be a resident of the state he or she will represent, and be at least 30 years old. To become president of the United States, a candidate must have lived in the country for at least 14 years, be a natural-born U.S. citizen, and be at least 35 years old. If these requirements are not met, a person cannot legally serve, even if elected.
Nominating Procedures
A variety of nominating procedures are used to select candidates in the United States. Usually, any person who wants to run for an elective office must show that he or she has a minimum amount of public support. A potential candidate might have to collect a minimum number of signatures of registered voters to qualify to appear on the ballot. Or a candidate might be nominated by a party caucus, which is an organized group of citizens that represents their party and have the authority to select its candidates. In the case of presidential nominations, states send representatives called delegates to each party’s presidential convention. At the convention, the delegates agree on a final candidate and publicly demonstrate their support for that candidate.
Qualifications for Voting
States require voters to be U.S. citizens. Traditionally voters also had to be at least 21 years old. This was based on an old Anglo-Saxon law that considered people adult at 21. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified (approved) by the states in 1971, officially lowered the voting age to 18 for all elections, state and federal. States also require various periods of residency before voting is permitted.
Elections result : Effects on US- India Relations
Since his re-election in 2019, Prime minister Modi has pushed through a series of policies seen by many in the country as unduly targeting India’s Muslim minority, including the revocation of Muslim-majority Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status and a new citizenship act that makes it easier for adherents of most large faiths practiced in South Asia, except Islam, to claim citizenship in India. Modi’s government has also sought to suppress dissent, most recently forcing the Indian branch of Amnesty International to shut down through legal pressure, which the rights group said was part of a “deliberate attempt by the government of India to stoke a climate of fear and dismantle the critical voices in India.”
Biden and Harris have both spoken out against India’s human rights violations and Modi’s nationalist leadership. In his Agenda for Muslim-American Communities, Biden condemned the Modi government’s new citizenship act and a separate attempt to build a population register that could provide future justification to expel or intern foreigners, calling the projects “inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism and with sustaining a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy.”
But Biden has also committed to strengthening the U.S.-India relationship. “The U.S. and India will stand together against terrorism in all its forms and work together to promote a region of peace and stability where neither China nor any other country threatens its neighbors,” Biden wrote in an op-ed in an Indian-American newspaper in October.
APSC Notes brings Prelims and Mains programs for APSC Prelims and APSC Mains Exam preparation. Various Programs initiated by APSC Notes are as follows:-
- APSC Mains 2024 Tests and Notes Program
- APSC Prelims Exam 2020- Test Series and Notes Program
- Apsc Prelims and Mains 2024 Tests Series and Notes Program
- Apsc Detailed Complete Prelims Notes