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Elections in Britain
Britain is divided into 650 political areas, known as constituencies or Seats.
Each of them is represented in the House of Commons by an MP (member of parliament).
Brits who are aged over 18 are allowed to vote in the General Elections. The party, which gets the most seats in the House of Commons, will form the Government.
The parties choose candidates for those seats for each constituency, so every constituency has about 4 or 5 candidates each from another political party you can vote for.
The party, which wins the general elections, forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister .The longest time a parliament can run is five years but the Prime Minister has the power to call an election, mostly if they have the best chance to be re-elected.
Elections in the US
The Congress is the central law making body in the US; it consists of the House of Representatives (435 members Congressmen/Congresswomen or Representatives) and the Senate (100 members called Senators, two for each State).
The number of Representatives for each State depends on the population of the state.
States are divided in districts and People can vote for one Representative in each district.
Representatives are elected every two years.
Senators hold Office for six years and every two years a third of the Senate is elected by the people.
General elections
Representatives usually belong to one of the two main political parties. There are primary elections on caucus held to decide which candidate runs in the general elections.
The voters usually can decide between candidates of the two main political parties but there are also sometimes candidates from smaller parties or ones who run independently.
The candidate who gets most votes is elected.
Electing the President
Presidential candidates decide themselves if they want to run for president. There are primary elections held to choose a candidate for each party to run for president. Primaries determine how many delegates to the party convention vote for each candidate. The candidate with the most votes is nominated at the party convention to run for president.
Every 4 years the president is elected but not direct, there are electors elected first. This system is called Electoral College. The elections take place on Tuesday after the 1st Monday in November. If a candidate get more than 50% of votes in a State he gets all the electoral votes in this state. So the candidates have to win in the most populous states because there are electors for every Representative and the more populous States have more Representatives (for example California has 31 one electors while states with low population like Wyoming only have 3 or 4 electors). There are as many electors like representatives as senators sit in the Congress. On 20th of January the winner accepts the election and gives his inaugural address.
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